Of One Blood
by kittsbud
Summary: The Doctor teams up with Martha Jones after the events in Journey’s End, but can any trip in the TARDIS really be just for fun? When the pair discover the past has been altered, and the Universe has just a short while to live,only they can save the world.
1. Chapter 1

**Of One Blood**

_Chapter One_

_(Author's note: This story takes place after the season 4 episode 'Journey's End.')_

The buzz from the television was harmless background noise, its constant droning lulling her into a light doze as she snuggled into a pillow on the couch.

The documentary on the Discovery Channel had been interesting, but somehow, the American Civil War was no match for the pleas of her drained body's cells.

Martha hadn't slept for a few days, maybe wouldn't for a few weeks to come – but then that tended to happen when your whole world, or rather your whole _planet_ was torn away.

It sounded almost comical now that the Earth was back spinning on its axis, but for one brief moment, the lights had almost gone out all across the universe.

Martha had helped change that, but, as always, success had come with a price.

Working with the Doctor again had awakened feelings she'd wanted to stay buried forever. Feelings for _him_ that she had yet to feel for the man she was engaged to.

Tom was a good man, an honest man, and she _did_ love him.

But not the way she would always love the Doctor.

Martha sighed in her sleep as she thought of his parting words to her.

"_Save the world one more time…"_

Except, she didn't know how, not without the hyperactive Time Lord from Gallifrey at her side.

She didn't want to be a slave to U.N.I.T. anymore, and Martha really wasn't sure that she wanted to take Jack Harkness up on his offer, either.

Torchwood had recently lost their medical officer, Owen Harper, and Jack had offered her the position; but was that really the kind of "saving the world" the Doctor had intended?

Martha squirmed, wriggling her body around on the sofa in search of a more comfortable spot, but just like her career choices, the right position was eluding her.

The engagement ring on her hand caught on a button in the upholstery as she tossed around, and as it snagged, she couldn't help but think that the tug was at her heartstrings, not her finger.

_Tom… _

But Tom was still in Africa, and the only company she had was the TV and an already cold cup of cocoa. Subconsciously, she considered slithering from the couch and making a fresh pot of coffee, but she was still so tired.

So uncertain about where life should lead her next.

And it was then she heard it – as if she had willed the sound, the _machine_ into her home with her uncertainty. Maybe she had, telepathy wasn't beyond_ some_ Gallifreyans…

The familiar mechanical resonance always reminded her of some giant robot having an asthma attack.

Of course, it couldn't be.

Not here.

Not _now. _

Martha stirred anyway, rubbing at her grainy eyes in the vain hope that something big and blue was about to materialize in the corner of the room.

The whirring noise grew louder, and with it came a flicker of light.

The light that signalled the TARDIS was about to make an unscheduled, but very welcome appearance.

Martha felt the whoosh of air against her face as the translucent outline of a police box began to solidify. Within seconds, the 'wooden' ship had taken full form and was sitting right next to the flashing screen of her TV.

She took a breath, wanting to see the Time Lord's grinning features, but knowing he would probably only bring her more heartache – more indecision.

The TARDIS door swung open silently and the Doctor bounded out as if he'd just landed on some uncharted, never-before-seen planet. His favourite blue suit was creased and his tie hung loose as always.

Some things never changed.

"Martha Jones, _fancy_ meeting you here…"

Martha sat up on the sofa and raised just one brow. "Well, I do live here…you could have knocked." She crossed her arms, feigning anger, but she already knew he wouldn't fall for it.

"Knock? _Knock? KNOCK?_ Shouldn't you have a doorbell or something..?" He skittered around the room to the back of the door before she could answer just to check, poking the mechanism with his sonic screwdriver for good measure. "A-ha! Thought so! Circuits are fused….maybe I could fix that for you…oh…_well…_corroded! Humans never look after their electronics…how _do _you people ever make it another five billion years...?"

Martha exhaled slowly. Ranting was one of the Doctor's strong points and he was definitely going to launch into a lengthy diatribe about door chimes, electronics and the price of bread if she didn't hush him.

"So what brings you halfway across the solar system at this time of night?" She fixed him with her best steely glare. Not that it was going to work on_ this_ Time Lord.

"The TARDIS?" He offered innocently, pulling a bunch of wires from the now defunct doorbell mechanism.

Martha couldn't help but smile. He had a way with words, _boy_ did he have a way with words. He wasn't ever going to be a Casanova or Romeo but he was cheeky, rude, and often far too sarcastic for his own good.

And she loved him for it.

"I meant what are you doing _here?_ In _my_ front room?"

"Oh! _Riiightttttt!"_ He slid a hand into his pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses - glasses that he definitely didn't need – and slipped them on to inspect the wires he'd dissected. "Well I was bored…yes _bored_…" He stopped to think. "Re-aligned the time vortex sensors. Thought you might like to go for a spin while I check them out!"

Martha was unimpressed. "You mean you hit it with the hammer again?"

The question was rewarded with another manic grin as he pushed the sonic between his teeth and began twisting wires together.

But there was something wrong.

Something he wasn't telling Martha, but she was astute enough to pick up on anyway. He hadn't_ just_ popped in to offer her a mystery tour. The Doctor knew she'd left all that behind – or at least, had tried to.

No, for him to be here now, he was hurting, and whether he admitted it or not, it was obvious in his slightly down-trodden features. He could mask the pain, the loneliness, with all the skill of a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord – but he couldn't hide it from Martha.

She'd seen the depths of his agony back in New New York when he'd eventually snapped and admitted the fate of his home world. The torment in his eyes, the weight of his own actions he'd had to bear for so long.

The joviality, the sarcasm, they were all just fronts that she could see through like a plate glass window. The Doctor used the humour, hid behind it. He had to, how else could he cope with the things he'd seen over the years and not go mad?

Martha frowned, finally realizing what was wrong with the picture before her. "Where's Donna?"

The Doctor stopped fiddling with the door chime and exhaled, his lips puckering outwards with an exaggerated gesture of defeat. After a moment, he switched off the sonic screwdriver and stuffed it back into his pocket.

"She's gone," he muttered, a doleful expression abruptly marring his usual playful façade. "_Well_…not _exactly_ gone…"

Moving away from the door, he stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and slowly ambled over to the TARDIS. Leaning his back against the left edge of the police box, he simply stared into space.

It was as if Martha suddenly wasn't there, his cheerless gaze as distant as the burning sun.

"Donna Noble has left the building," he murmured as if reliving a past memory. "Donna Noble has been saved…"

"Saved?" Martha didn't understand, but sometimes that was how it was with the Doctor. "'Nother dimension, like Rose?"

"Home." He shook his head and then tilted it back to rest on the surface of the TARDIS. Perhaps contact with the machine was somehow comforting. He was part of it, it was part of him – the perfect symbiosis. "I took her home and I can't risk her seeing me ever again…if she remembers any of what happened, just for one second, she'll burn up…"

Martha didn't know the details and she suspected asking would only cause him more heartache – or rather twin heartache, in his case.

She wanted to rush over and hug him, tell him it would all be okay, but she resisted the urge.

The Doctor had emotions, but he rarely showed them – even this little outburst was more than he usually allowed people to see. He normally wore one of three faces: The manic scientist, the angry Time Lord or the thoughtful philosopher.

Today was an aberration she didn't know how to categorize.

Martha didn't understand _how_ to help, but she thought she understood the cause.

How many times had he lost someone, either to another dimension, or to their old lives…or worse still, to death? Over nine hundred years, the body count must have been pretty high.

Maybe he'd hidden that for so long, hidden all the hurt and pain and _regret,_ that he'd believed he could outrun the past forever.

But in one fell swoop Davros, the Dalek leader, had changed all that.

Martha, and all the Doctor's acquaintances, had recently borne witness to his soul being bared, and it had not been pretty.

"_How many have died in your name?" _

"_The Doctor, the man who keeps running, never looking back because he dare not out of shame..." _

Martha could still hear the metallic voice crucifying her friend with its words. If Davros' speech had bitten into the Doctor's psyche then, how must he feel now that Donna had become another victim of his escapades?

She opened her mouth to try and offer some small words of comfort, but as she glanced up, her eyes locking with his, they shared something.

_Don't,_ a little voice screamed in Martha's head. Was he reading her mind, or had she become that good at reading _him_?

In any case, the Doctor seemed to have recovered from his version of the blues the instant their gazes had touched. He pushed away from the TARDIS, his downcast expression transforming into an ear-to-ear grin.

"Anyway, Martha Jones! Wait, no…_Doctor_ Jones…ooh, sounds like a Spielberg film…" He rapped on the TARDIS's blue woodwork with his knuckles. "Fancy coming for that spin? We could do the multiple moons of Bionite, or how about tickets to the burning sunset on Lexicon Five? There used to be a Krilitane selling them on eBay for a snip!" He cocked his head and his brows furrowed in thought. "Hmmn, I think he got nabbed by the Judoon as a ticket tout, though…wasn't pretty…"

Martha looked taken aback, not at the mention of the Judoon, but that eBay seemed to have taken over the universe, not just little old planet Earth. "eBay? _Seriously?_ Out there, among the stars, and you people have _eBay_?"

"Oh yesss!" He grinned and then clicked his fingers in front of the TARDIS, mentally commanding its door to creak open.

Martha looked suitably impressed at the new trick. In her day, the almost mystical machine had required a key. Still, impressed or not, she wasn't quite ready to go back into time and space without laying down a few ground rules.

Yes, he seemed to need someone right now, and no way would she deny him that, but after racing around the planet with the Osterhagen key, she felt like a little less mayhem and a little more relaxation – perhaps something closer to home than all the galaxies far far away he seemed to want to explore.

"Oi!" She raised her voice to get his attention – not always an easy thing to do once he'd started bounding around like a rabid gazelle.

The Doctor paused mid-bound across the threshold to the inner, bigger TARDIS, looking like a deer caught in a van's headlights.

"Can't we just do something a little more Earth-related for once?"

Martha crossed her arms again defiantly. She'd learned the hard way that sometimes it was the only method of getting through to him. Turning towards the TV, she nodded at the programme she'd been watching earlier. The credits were rolling up, but it was still easily recognizable as a history documentary.

"How about the Gettysburg Address? Pretty pivotal point in history, yeah? I mean, I dunno, can we just not do anything _dangerous_ for once?"

The Doctor cringed as if she'd just stabbed him with a Sycoraxian sword. "Pivotal, yes, boring,_ totally_…c'mon,_ Indiana_, where's your sense of adventure?" Finishing the madcap leap he'd stalled previously, he landed in the TARDIS and whirled to waggle the sonic screwdriver in Martha's direction conspiratorially.

The little blue light flickered like a beacon, calling her inside, but she refused to be so easily led. She smiled, but still didn't move. This was _so_ like working with kids.

"Oh, _alright_," he caved. "Gettysburg it is then!" When Martha still didn't budge he narrowed his eyes, an impish twinkle flashing across the deep brown of his irises. "Just one trip?"

Martha let her smile spread into a grin as she strode inside the time machine like it was a second home. "That's just what you said the first time…"

* * *

The wheezing noise from the center console's rotor was almost hypnotic as it moved through its cycle. A pulsing green shaft that throbbed like the TARDIS's very own heart, bathing the control room in its alien glow.

Martha watched it with renewed admiration every time she took a trip with the Doctor.

The machine was so ancient, so battered, and yet it traversed the universe and beyond like a figure skater whirling lithely across ice.

Of course, it had its moments. There was rarely a journey when the Doctor didn't have to slap, bash or hammer the controls at least once, but still, the ship was like the eighth wonder of the world.

As she watched, the rotor began to slow and the Doctor started to furiously press buttons, switches, and weird items that definitely didn't look like they belonged in a time ship – one, she was sure, looked suspiciously like a bicycle tyre pump as he began to push it energetically up and down.

If the Doctor saw her watching him, he didn't show it, continuing to bounce around the console until the rotor became static.

Martha waited, wondering what kind of landing they were about to make. Sometimes, you couldn't even tell the TARDIS had moved in time or space, but others, it was like being in a tiny sailboat that was being hit by a tsunami.

Today, fortunately, the Doctor had managed a textbook arrival – well, if Time Lords actually used textbooks. Martha suspected they'd gone beyond that millennia before the human race had started walking upright.

"Ready to meet the President?" The Doctor leapt down from the controls and grabbed Martha's hand, tugging her towards the door like he was all of six years old and had just arrived in a toy shop.

When the door swung open, he hurtled through it, only to stop dead a few feet from the TARDIS.

As Martha watched, his six foot gangly frame seemed to sag at the shoulders and he deflated like a balloon.

Running a hand through the front of his hair, he spun around until he'd done a complete one-eighty, surveying the very _wrong_ scenery that encircled his ship. "Aww, I _knew_ I should have turned second left at the Medusa Cascade…"

Martha smiled and stepped out into a cold blast of air. It wasn't unusual for the Doctor to be a little, um…_off_ target. "We _so_ need to get you an intergalactic Sat Nav."

He turned and looked at her with one raised brow, a look of vagueness seeping across his features. "_Really_?" Then he broke into a grin. "Nah, had enough of those with the smoky ol' Atmos! And besides!" He whirled around, arms outstretched. "Look at this place! It's _brilliant_! Reminds me of the Ood Sphere! Except I don't reckon we're in the Horsehead Nebula…"

Martha waited for the lecture to be over, letting her ears shut off until his voice was nothing more than a dull thrum in her head.

Whatever planet they had landed on, it definitely wasn't earth, never mind late nineteenth century America. The ground was nothing more than a thick icy tundra that stretched as far as the eye could see.

And it was cold, so very cold.

She unconsciously rubbed at her arms as she scanned the horizon. There didn't seem to be any kind of life here, animal, human or alien.

It was like one huge snow bank that rolled out into eternity.

And there was no sun in the sky, no clouds, just a wash of clear blue like someone had daubed in the heavens with watercolours.

Whatever the Doctor thought of this place, Martha didn't like it – no, that wasn't the right word – she _feared_ it.

She spun around, expecting to have to drag him away from the place kicking and screaming, but when she looked, his face had already turned grim without her saying a word.

The Doctor was kneeling, his hand patting the white sheen at his feet as if he could analyze its structure just by touch. After a moment, he scooped up a ball of white slush and rubbed his forefinger over it, eyes narrowing to pinpoints as he scrutinized the minute frozen particles. "'_Ello_…"

"I am _so_ not having a snowball fight," Martha warned, just in case he was about to turn mischievous on her.

The Doctor dropped the white sludge and without saying a word bounded back into the TARDIS. Grabbing the centre console's monitor, he began punching buttons until the details of their last journey appeared onscreen.

The figures meant nothing to Martha, but they obviously did to the quirky Time Lord – and he wasn't happy with what he was seeing. Letting go of the monitor he began to manically pace, slapping a hand against his forehead every few seconds as if he'd gone mad. "Can't be…yes…no! _YES!_"

"So where or when exactly are we?" Martha queried.

The Doctor stopped pacing but his eyes were still wide. "This is the right time." He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Well, right _wrong_ time. The Gettysburg Address was Nov 19th 1873. We landed July 3rd…"

Martha pulled a face and pointed towards the open door. "That? Out _there_? _That's_ supposed to be America?"

He nodded, the energy rapidly draining from his actions as he channelled it into thinking instead. "That's Cemetery Ridge out there…should be twelve thousand five hundred Confederate troops marching to assault Union lines…"

"But it can't be! I mean, you must have messed up something when you realigned whatever, yeah?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Just checked." He returned to the console, tapping urgently on the small inset keyboard with one hand as he pushed on his glasses with the other. "Oh, this is bad…this is very_ very_ bad…as in 'the Earth is going to freeze to death before England ever gets to win the World Cup' bad…"

Martha put a hand on her hip and huffed. "Well are you gonna tell me, then?"

"We're sitting at the epicentre of some kind of anomaly. Whatever caused the freezing effect is cascading, spreading outwards. It's created a glacial wasteland for over two hundred miles in any direction." He pulled the glasses back off and stared at the screen in thought. "If we don't stop it, the whole planet will be consumed in less than six months."

"But the world can't get frozen back in 1863! We'd know about it, wouldn't we?"

The Doctor grabbed his brown overcoat from one of the inner support beams of the TARDIS and slid it on. "Wibbly wobbly timey whimey stuff, remember!" He jogged to the open door. "Well, c'mon then! Always fancied doing a bit of snowboarding…"

Before she could protest, he'd vanished back out into the white barren world that had once been a terrifying battle ground.

Martha followed, noting that the sky above was growing dark. The pastel blue watercolours had been replaced by something gloomier, but there were no stars yet, nor was there any sign of the moon.

It was as if they'd been sucked from the heavens by whatever dark force was freezing the planet. _And I asked to be brought here! Nothing dangerous I said! Something a little more relaxing, I said. Yeah right! _

Hugging herself, Martha moved on, picking up the pace to catch up with the overexcited Time Lord before he disappeared over the peak of a drift. His overcoat billowed behind him in the frigid wind, and like the rapidly solidifying landscape, the airstream seemed to be growing stronger as they walked.

The Doctor paused, sliding his hands into his trouser pockets as he surveyed the washed out panorama. "What are we missing, Martha Jones?"

Martha twisted the engagement ring around and around on her finger, hoping it would give some inspiration as she followed the Doctor's gaze across what was left of Pennsylvania.

It didn't, but her sharp eye for detail did.

"What's that? Over there, by that outcropping?" She pointed to a large section of tundra that seemed to jut away from the rest – like there was something beneath it, perhaps.

"Bonkers!" The Doctor exclaimed as he sprinted off towards the ledge. "This is totally _bonkers_! Can't be happening, but it is…talk about paradox…oh, I _love_ a good paradox…keep you on your toes for weeks!"

He skidded to a halt a few feet from the ridge of ice and then kneeled, patting the ground as he had before. After a moment's contemplation, he backed up, sifting through his pockets until he found his sonic screwdriver.

Deftly twirling it between his fingers, he adjusted the setting and the bulbous tip began to glow an iridescent blue. Pointing the screwdriver downwards, he took another step backwards as if he was avoiding stepping in something nasty.

"What you doing?" Martha dared to ask.

"Resonation pattern…break up the ice," he said matter-of-factly. "_Well_…would break up the ice if it _was_ ice…which it's not…"

The tundra in front of them began to move, like it was changing, but not exactly melting. The white mass seemed to separate at their feet as if the Doctor was parting a sea.

And beneath the solid ice, some vestiges of the human race remained.

"There! Almost as good as Moses!" Ignoring the slippery footing and sharp incline, the Doctor dived into the abyss he had just created, not caring what dangers might await in the shadows.

Darkness was falling around them, and the small pit in the ground could easily be a haven for anything supernatural or alien.

Martha shuddered, but for once not from the frigid air around her. Still, it was better to be doing something than standing around waiting for the chatty Time Lord to return, so she followed him down, her boots sliding wildly on the slick sides of the cavern.

At the bottom, the Doctor was already examining their sickening find as if he was on an archeological dig.

Bodies littered the entire area – and not just human corpses. Horses that had carried vital supplies lay stiff alongside a huge trail of wagons they had once been burdened with hauling.

A Confederate flag stood tall, the lace frozen hard as if it had been caught and solidified as it blew in the wind.

Grey uniform after grey uniform seemed to form a carpet of the dead, and Martha realized it was going to be hard to move around without treading on what had once been a living, breathing person.

Most of the dead appeared to have been caught with an expression of surprise on their faces, as if what had happened here had been so instant, so unexpected they hadn't had chance to react.

This mound of bodies had formed the outcropping the Doctor had just 'melted'. And no doubt, beneath the rest of the ice fields there would be hundreds more: Twelve thousand five hundred soldiers who should have fought at Cemetery Ridge, instead lying here like grotesque ice sculptures.

And how would that shape history?

How _had_ it already influenced history?

Martha didn't want to think about the people who had already blinked out of existence in her world because their forefathers had been killed here by whatever was happening.

She crouched down, examining the nearest body, even though she had no clue what they were supposed to be looking for.

The soldier looked young, too young to be on a battlefield like this. Would he have lived if Gettysburg had happened? She reached out, touching his taut flesh, and was shocked by how hard and cold it was. _Human block of ice…_

"How can the bodies be so solid? I mean, if it's that cold why haven't we frozen to death too?" Martha looked across and met the Doctor's gaze, his angular features suddenly making him appear far more serious than usual.

Scraping at the ground, he removed a thin layer of the 'snow' and let the flakes fall into Martha's open palm. "Like I said, _not _ice. They're a form of crystal. When they first hit the earth's atmosphere there was a chemical reaction – for a time, everything got super-cold, not just really, really, really, _really_…"

Martha stopped him. "Yeah, I get the picture, but what I mean is, where are they from? It's not like the earth gets bombarded with alien crystals every day is it?"

The Doctor considered it. "Not unless that Denubian soap flake factory on Tarsus Four has exploded again, at any rate…"

"Can we stop it spreading?"

There was an awkward moment where Martha actually thought he was going to say no. Then his bleak expression changed like someone had flicked on a light bulb.

"'Course I can!" He beamed. "I'm a genius!" Pushing up from the ground, he pointed back up the side of the hollow. "I reckon if we leg it back to the TARDIS we might have this all sorted and be home in time for tea…nice cup of Darjeeling and a crumpet…"

With that, he began scrambling back up the icy slope with all the ease of someone who'd climbed Mount Everest – but then, knowing the Doctor, he probably had.

Martha carefully followed in his wake, using the hand and footholds he'd discovered to haul herself back to the top.

Once out of the weird hole in the ground, she looked around, noting that while they'd been exploring the world had truly gone dark around them.

_And still there are no stars, no moon…_ She thought about asking the Doctor why, but some tiny niggle in the back of her mind was too scared to. What if she didn't like the answer?

Brushing loose crystals from her leather jacket, she glanced downwards and found herself looking at a set of paw prints in the slush at her feet.

"Doctor?"

He followed her startled gaze and hunkered over, pushing his overcoat behind his back. "Ooh…Canis lupus…big one too…"

"A wolf, right? But how can it have survived out here when everyone else has been turned into human Cornettos?"

The Doctor slowly inhaled, glancing warily around their position as if the creature might suddenly appear. This time when he spoke, it was in a slower more deliberate voice, and he had the far away look in his eye that said his mind had latched onto something.

Something he didn't seem to like.

"Did you know that the Egyptians believed Anubis, the wolf god, led the deceased to the afterlife? Or that in Norse mythology, there was a wolf god called Fenrir who would one day bring about the end of all things?"

"So, maybe we _can't _stop this whole thing, is that what you're saying, yeah?" Martha watched his reaction, but as usual, his mood had already changed again to something more chipper.

"Nah…they're just myths." His face quirked into a smile. "Stuff and nonsense! Whereas _I'm very_ real! In fact, I'm a very very _very _real whizz at this 'saving the Earth' stuff! C'mon, back to the TARDIS. We have work to do!"

And with that, he darted off at breakneck speed, his waterlogged All Stars squishing slightly as he ran.

Martha turned before following, an uncanny feeling of being watched invading her mind. For a second, as she whirled, she thought she saw a flash of grey fur vanishing behind a drift.

But it was just her imagination, wasn't it?

And even if it wasn't, the wolf must have survived much the same way they had – it must have found its way onto the transformed landscape _after _the big freeze.

At least, that was what Martha was going to tell herself, because the only other explanation would take her back to the Doctor's stuff of myth and legend.

_I am the Bad Wolf, I create myself…_

And she _so_ didn't want to go there.

* * *

The TARDIS seemed so inviting after the bleak exterior world that Martha almost forgot it was an alien thing.

It was welcoming, it was warm, and most of all, it had an aroma that was so indescribable, Martha imagined even the sweet scent of Ambrosia couldn't match it.

Perhaps it was all in her mind, perhaps the little ship's perception filter could work both ways. After all, if it could convince the masses that a blue police box actually belonged wherever it landed, then convincing a passenger _it _was cozy would be 'easy peasy' as the Doctor would say.

Not that he was saying much right now.

The moment they'd arrived back, he'd scurried over to the centre console and stuck on his glasses. Since then, he'd been muttering and pressing keys while Martha watched his less-than-scientific dance around the controls.

Without warning, he jerked bolt upright and slapped his forehead. "I don't believe it! I don't _believe_ it! Wait…that sounded so Meldrew…_anyway_…" He finally looked at Martha as if she understood what he was saying perfectly. "It's the Rift…and we're parked right next to it…"

"What, that thing in Cardiff where you sometimes make the odd pit-stop for fuel?"

The Doctor tugged at his ear as if he was still missing something. "This is one end of it, yes," he eventually conceded. "Some kind of temporal energy is stimulating the new activity. Making it create a doorway from another dimension to this one." He didn't look happy. "Maybe even a _parallel _dimension…"

"But that's impossible, right?"

"Right…_right_," The Doctor agreed, or maybe he didn't. "_Except,_ the Rift is so powerful now that it's tearing open space and time. All sorts of gaps and little niches where planets, maybe whole universes, could get sucked into the void."

"So, the crystals are from another world and it's basically seeping into this timeline and taking over? Why _now_? I mean, it didn't happen this way originally." Martha joined the Doctor as he rifled a hand through his hair.

"Microscopic singularity passing through this solar system. Somehow, the energy emitted by the singularity shifted the chroniton particles in the Rift into a high state of temporal polarization and…"

"And you just made that up!"

"_So_ did not!" He looked up to the TARDIS roof in thought, eyes narrowing as he considered it. "Right…um…yes…_well_…_Star Trek_! I knew that line would come in useful one day…"

Martha wanted to punch him, but she resisted the urge. He'd gone from the most dejected soul on the planet – no in the universe – to the most annoying in the space of two hours.

"Never mind your very dodgy taste in television. What can we do to stop this?"

The Doctor sighed and rolled his eyes as if Martha just didn't appreciate good sci-fi, then began frenetically punching keys again. "If I can just trace the temporal energy signature augmenting the Rift's power then…" He banged a fist on the console. "_There!_ Long Island, New York, 1972!"

"Earth? Not some weird, totally freaky green aliens trying to fry the galaxy or something? Just _Earth_?"

"Well…" The Doctor cocked his head to one side. "Could be some totally freaky green aliens trying to fry the galaxy _from_ Earth. Not like it hasn't happened before…although wait, now that's interesting…" He stuck his face a couple of centimetres from the monitor and then blinked.

"What? What do you see?" Martha asked, her impatience growing with every second.

"The extra power's coming from Montauk! _Fancy_ that! 'Course it's just an urban myth…at least that's what they like people to believe…no _real_ aliens, noArea 51…"

"So what's this Montauk place and how can it be affecting the timeline?" Martha rubbed at her brow as something hit her. "And hey, how come U.N.I.T. don't know about it?"

"Governments," the Doctor chided. "_Always_ have to have secrets. It'll be the death of them someday. Just not this century though." He tapped at the monitor. "So, _anyway._.. The Montauk Project was/is the continuation of Project Rainbow, or as some people called it, The Philadelphia Experiment…"

"Wasn't that a film back in the eighties?"

"Best way to cover up the truth," The Doctor exclaimed as he started to reset the TARDIS's destination coordinates to 1972. "Stick the truth right under you humans' noses and you never think to believe it! 'Course, there was a lot more to it than making a ship vanish. Oh _yes_…Unified field theory, mind control, time travel, alien autopsies…they're a meddlesome lot at Montauk…"

"And now whatever they're doing has changed the Rift, made it even more unstable until it's tearing up time…"

"Crude description of such a _beautiful_ event, but yeah, basically." He began vigorously attacking the 'bicycle pump' again, which probably meant it was time for take off. "Doctor Jones, we'll never make an Einstein out of you…"

"What, grey haired and wrinkly? No thanks!" Martha smiled, but deep down she wasn't feeling very cheerful. There was too much going on, too much at stake yet again.

_Can we make one journey, just one journey and not run into trouble? _

But she knew that was too much to ask for with the Doctor.

"So we just drop in unannounced, shut them down somehow and still make it home for tea?"

"_Well…_ maybe supper's the one to aim for." He winked, then slammed his hand into something that Martha was sure was a brass reception bell.

"Wait a minute…if this Montauk place likes to dissect aliens, should you be handing yourself over on a plate?" It seemed like a stupid question. The Doctor wasn't just going to walk in and announce himself, and they had the trusty psychic paper to get them inside.

But still, the odds were already stacking against them before they even arrived in '72.

"Me? _Alien?_ Nah…even have a doctor with me to prove it." He pinched himself and faked a hurt expression that she'd even suggest it. "See! Human as the next man!"

Martha looked around the TARDIS and feigned surprise. "Yeah, perfect seeing as there is no next man. Just make sure you don't end up as their chief _lab rat_!"

"Ooh, funny you should say that…1972_ IS_ the year of the rat in the Chinese calendar!" He raised one brow, shortly followed by the other. "Nah…couldn't be…"

"Yeah? Just as long as it's not the year of the wolf…"

The instant the words had left her mouth, Martha wished she'd kept her jaw clamped shut.

The TARDIS control room's usual green radiance vanished, sinking the main area into a deep, bloody red that seemed to leach a terrifying warning into the very air she breathed.

To complete the ominous new theme, a cavernous cloister bell began to toll.

Martha had never been witness to this before, but she knew what it meant. She knew that the TARDIS only mutated this way when some terrible catastrophe was about to occur.

It was a cry for help.

The machine's way of calling its master, warning him that the universe was in danger.

The TARDIS had been a portent like this in the recent Dalek attacks, but to Martha this drumming knell was even more poignant because it wasn't Cybermen, or Krilitanes, or even the Daleks again that were about to destroy everything.

The Universe was going to implode - worlds, galaxies, people, dimensions, all smashed together until nothing was left but floating atoms – if even that.

And not because some ancient race from the stars had declared war.

But because _mankind_ was never satisfied.

Martha slammed a fist into the TARDIS console, not even thinking about where her punch landed. Had they been through so much, fought so many, only to be destroyed by themselves?

In a way, it would be poetic.

Annihilated in the past trying to change the future.

And what of her family? Parents, brother, sister? Had they already been erased from existence?

Martha sensed movement behind her as the bell finally ceased its peal of death. She looked down and realized her hand was bleeding from where she'd punched the ship.

And then the Doctor was at her side, reading her mind with just one take of her expression. He placed his hand on her shoulder, his own emotions camouflaged by a wan smile. "Time to be the cavalry one last time, Doctor Jones…"

Martha nodded, finally knowing why she'd been needed so badly on this trip.

Not for the Doctor's sake, not for her own, but for life as everyone knew it.

"_Save the world one more time…"_

And with the Doctor, she would.

TBC...


	2. Chapter 2

Of One Blood

_Chapter Two_

The TARDIS seemed to slip seamlessly into the landscape, blending with the Long Island vegetation as if it had been carefully placed there to use the foliage as camouflage.

The familiar wheeze from the box's rotor faded, and as the door swung open, not a sound greeted the scene save for the Doctor's still squishing footsteps.

There was no bird song, no insect twitter - despite their rustic location.

"It's so quiet," Martha noted as she joined the strangely silent Time Lord.

The Doctor nodded, sliding his hands into his trouser pockets as he surveyed the sky.

It was a faultless blue, pock marked here and there with a high bank of cirrocumulus clouds - not perfect weather, but certainly more natural than what they had left behind.

And yet, there was still something wrong here.

In the distance, just above the peaks of the trees, the Doctor could see the massive radar dish that pinpointed Montauk Airforce Station, its cold, grey structure jutting out into the sky like it was beckoning someone; or some_thing_.

The Doctor nodded towards it and began to make his way across the grass to a nearby path. As he walked, he turned so that he was actually walking backwards to talk to Martha. "They do mind control here you know! Lots of flashing images and Bob's your uncle." He snapped his fingers for effect. "You could find yourself running naked up the Statue of Liberty!"

"Yeah well, I don't plan on letting them poke around in my head, thanks."

The Doctor grinned. "Quite right! Very nice head it is too!"

He looked at Martha, but the smile on his face wasn't quite as genuine as it could have been. Was he doing it again? Was he dragging someone along against their will until they got hurt or worse?

Donna flashed before his eyes and he saw the look of desperation on her face just before he'd wiped her memory forever.

He should have left Martha alone – left her to live a real, _normal_ life.

Just because he tended to act a little manically – well maybe more than a little – didn't meant he was stupid. Martha had feelings for him, always had, and they were feelings he couldn't return.

Not after Rose.

He got too close to the blonde. Allowed _his_ _feelings_ to cloud his judgement like no time lord ever should.

They reached the edge of the cobbled path and he stopped, putting a hand on Martha's forearm so that she'd actually stop and listen. It wasn't very often he got serious – he hated to be serious – but there was a time and a place and this needed to be done.

"Martha…you don't have to go in there with me. You could stay back in the TARDIS."

Martha looked affronted and the glint in her eyes said she actually thought he was still joking around. "Yeah, right, stuff me in the police box while you have all the fun!" She opened her mouth to continue and then stopped. Eventually, she punched him lightly in the shoulder. "No way, Mister, you're not leaving me behind! Smith and Jones all the way…got it?"

The Doctor smiled again, but there was just a hint of hesitation as he resumed his gentle amble along the pathway. _Next time a Dalek master goads you, stuff in some ear plugs,_ he chided subconsciously.

"So, you never finished telling me about this place?"

"Oh, it's lovely! Just_ lovely_…if you're into the whole guinea pig thing, at any rate." The Doctor stopped again as they reached the edge of the treeline where a tarmac road converged with the edge of the path. He glanced up at the dish now filling the skyline. "It's rumoured they used the 410 MHz - 420 MHz signals from the dish to influence the human mind."

"Sort of a mechanical, government-controlled Svengali…" Martha shuddered. "But what does that have to do with the past turning into _The Day After Tomorrow_? I mean, this place existed in our original timeline, so what have they done different, and why?"

The Doctor began to trudge along the verge at the side of the roadway. In the distance, the guarded gates to Montauk were coming into view at the base of the tower.

"It must be the continuation of Project Rainbow," he theorized looking slightly vague. "Magnetic field manipulation. Unified field theory…but wait, no…_right_…that still wouldn't account for the new energy source powering the Rift…" He clicked his fingers in midair. "Outside intervention! Has to be!"

"You think someone came here and gave these people future technologies just so the past could get frozen," Martha reasoned. "That doesn't make sense. In fact, it's mad."

"Bonkers!" The Doctor agreed. "But since when has that stopped the megalomaniacs of the Universe?"

He stopped again, this time grabbing Martha's arm and pulling her behind a short length of shrubbery just in time to hide them from an approaching vehicle.

The black Chevy sedan breezed past with two black-suited men sitting stiffly on the front bench seat like they were mannequins. The car's number plates indicated it was a government vehicle, although the designation did little to reveal which organization within the hierarchy.

"Wow, real life men in black!" Martha peered over the Doctor's shoulder as the Bel Air melted into the distance, Bowie's _Starman_ filtering through one of its open windows.

The Doctor scratched at his ear absently. "_Really?_ Didn't look anything like Will Smith to me." He dived energetically from behind the bushes and began padding in the direction the car had taken. "And they like Bowie too! Old friend of mine is Ziggy…"

Martha gaped. "You're kidding me? David Bowie's an alien?"

The Doctor scowled as if Martha really didn't listen, but then the frown broke into a decidedly loopy grin. "Nah, just inspired by one! _Me!_ Who do you think _Starman _is all about then? 'Course I knew I shouldn't have let him into the TARDIS after that gig…was cleaning up for a week…"

Martha looked the Doctor up and down as if appraising him. "Yeah, well, I can _definitely _see where _Space __**Oddity **_came from then…"

The Doctor feigned an affronted expression. "Oi!" But then nodded towards the looming gates and the six foot four guard with just a little bit more seriousness. "Time for the psychic paper to work its wonders, Martha Jones!"

The Airforce MP stepped forwards as if he was the psychic one, effectively blocking their path with his burly frame and outstretched M16 rifle.

"This is government property. Airforce personal only." The guard's voice was deep and deadly serious, as if he practiced in front of a mirror every night just to get the tone right.

His eyes locked with the Doctor's as if he expected the somewhat skinny little man to balk at his presence, but the Doctor simply grinned at him. "'Course it is! That's why we're here!"

He flipped open the wallet holding the psychic paper and stuffed it confidently under the MP's nose. "Professor John Smith and my assistant, Martha Jones. Here from Langley to do a spot check…"

The guard threw a glance over his shoulder to another airman sitting in a security booth at the side of the gate. He didn't speak, but it looked like some unspoken words were shared between them with just one look.

"We have no paperwork for a John Smith. No authorization from Mr Tesla means no entry." The M16 seemed to suddenly move in the airman's hands until it was pointed forwards ready to fire, and he squared up to the Doctor, chin jutting out as if he was just itching for a confrontation.

"Well…obviously …that's why it's a _spot _check!" The Doctor waggled his finger in front of the airman defiantly, but in his free hand he began to discreetly work the sonic screwdriver.

"And your accent," the guard grumbled. "Not exactly what I'd expect from _Langley_…"

Martha stepped forwards to join the Doctor. "We've been brought in as independent assessors. _Torchwood_," she offered, using the name like it should mean something.

The guard's face creased in uncertainty, but before he could argue further the gate behind him buzzed open. He whirled to look at his friend in the gate room, but the man seemed too busy with the console in front of him to look up.

"Right then! Nice meeting you, but we have spots to check on!" The Doctor grabbed Martha's hand and dragged her past the guard before anything else could be said.

Diving into the first building that afforded itself as cover, he sonicked the electronic door lock open and breathlessly pushed through the entrance with Martha in tow.

"Okay, so that was just weird," Martha observed, rubbing her arm when he finally let go. "That soldier was acting like …like he knew what was going on. Like he knew what his mate in the gate room was thinking without actually asking about us…"

The Doctor nodded. "They've been conducting psychic experiments here for years. Using the dish signals, remember?" He began to pace. "Nothing this big, though…must be the Rift energy…and it's getting stronger…"

"Which means what?"

"When I first encountered the Rift back in Cardiff, I met a young girl – Gwyneth. She'd been exposed to the Rift's energy since childhood and she'd developed psychic powers…" He paused, suddenly all scientist. "But with whatever is augmenting the Rift now…oh, this could be very, very bad…exposure could change people…I mean _literally _change people…"

"What, like give them different personalities? Give them all these psychic gifts? Not to mention blow a hole in the past and freeze it over…"

The Doctor shook his head. "Maybe worse…maybe a lot, lot _lot_…" He stopped mid-sentence, rethinking his next move. "We need to find the project room. Shut it down before it's too late!"

Flicking tiny settings on the sonic screwdriver, its blue tip began to pulsate.

"We can do that? Shut down a project this big, I mean?"

"Oh yes!" He looked almost cheery, despite the circumstances. "I've set this to search out the temporal disturbance. The closer we get, the faster it flashes. Once we find the energy powering the Rift, we shut it down, destroy the rogue technology fuelling it and…"

"And be home for supper," Martha finished for him.

The Doctor didn't even seem to hear.

Instead, he'd already dashed halfway down the white-walled corridor, hand outstretched as the screwdriver throbbed faster and faster.

"Alons-Y, Martha Jones!"

* * *

Racing through a top secret government facility without clearance, and definitely without any kind of backup hadn't been on Martha's to do list – at least not when she got out of bed this morning.

And yet, here she was stuck in 1972 trying to stop the world freezing to death.

In retrospect, maybe working for U.N.I.T. or Torchwood might be a quieter life than this…

Pausing when the Doctor stopped to examine his screwdriver, Martha glanced around their position.

So far, all they'd come across was corridor after corridor filled with endless rooms and endless experiments. Animal cages, control rooms, ancient looking mainframes that were no doubt state of the art in this era.

But no Project Rainbow.

The Doctor was convinced the experiment was close at hand now, but Martha wasn't so easily swayed they could actually shut it down.

The US government, or whoever really called the shots here, wasn't about to just up and close down just because two people from the future dropped in and asked them to.

Of course, the Doctor had the brains to stop the project short term, but disabling it might not stop Montauk rebuilding.

_Should I even be worrying about this stuff?_ Martha glanced at the ceiling and cringed when she spotted a security camera.

"Just how did we get past that guard, anyway?" she asked casually. "One minute he was all business, right? And the next he was dazed and confused, and the gate was opening…"

The Doctor wiggled his eyebrows and waved the sonic under Martha's nose. "They use the dish frequencies to mess with the human mind…I just messed with the frequencies and abracadabra, or Open Sesame…or…come into my parlour…" He shrugged. "Or maybe not the last one…"

Martha pointed towards the motorized camera that was fortunately not pointing in their direction. "So, it won't work on that, yeah? Because sooner or later I'm betting that guard is gonna start questioning letting us in…"

"Disabled those when we first came inside. Signals, frequencies, all the same when you need to cut them off…few zaps from this setting right here and…" The Doctor mumbled as he fiddled further with the screwdriver. _"A-ha!_ Here we go…the Rift should be right…" He stepped into the next corridor, straight into the face of an awaiting guard. "Around this corner…"

Martha bumped into the Doctor's back as she followed his lead, and the pair almost squashed the poor MP before he'd had chance to confront them.

Martha should have known better than to just walk around without caution.

She'd had military training. She'd fought with the best.

But then, the Doctor's erratic, devil-may-care attitude tended to be infectious.

Add to that his strange behaviour after they'd arrived here and she'd been thrown totally off kilter.

"_Martha…you don't have to go in there with me. You could stay back in the TARDIS." _

That was so unlike him.

"Hello there!" The Time Lord's voice filtered through her thoughts, bringing her back to the present.

He was standing, hands in pockets, grinning at the MP as if the airman should be expecting him.

The young hazel-eyed blond squirmed under the Doctor's gaze, moving his weapon's strap, but not attempting to strike a more defensive pose – at least not yet, at any rate.

"This is security level 1. Authorized staff only." The MP fixed his eyes on Martha rather than continue appraising the Doctor.

With one look, Martha could tell the intense stare he was getting from the Gallifreyan was doing nothing for his nerves. The man was sweating hard, a thin sheen of perspiration covering his face as his chest rose and fell just a little too rapidly. _Okay, so I hope it's just the Doctor's stare… _

"We're here for the spot checks." The Doctor flashed the psychic paper once again, never once hesitating. "Professor John Smith…"

"We're from Torchwood," Martha added, keeping a close watch on the MP's now shaking hands in case he reached for his weapon.

"I…I should call this in…" He glanced over his shoulder to a red phone hanging on the wall by the project room door.

To Martha, the device looked huge compared to her modern day mobile, but if the guard used it, it could be just as dangerous.

"Now what would you want to do that for?" The Doctor stepped forward, slipping away the paper and its wallet. "We're here now…may as well let us in and get it done with…" His voice was low, almost hypnotic, and to Martha it reminded her of Alec Guinness pulling his Jedi mind trick.

"Get it done with…" The MP mimicked, slowly turning about face to punch in a key code by the door. "…may as well let you in…"

"That's right! Jolly good!" The Doctor patted the man on the back as if he'd taught a puppy a new trick and then quickly bounded through the project room entrance as it slid open.

Martha followed, mouth agape as the door whooshed closed again behind them. "I don't believe what I just saw. You've _so_ been watching too many George Lucas films…"

The Doctor smirked and then winked. "Worked, didn't it? Besides…always fancied myself with a lightsaber…" He glanced around the thankfully empty room, noting that a low hum was emanating from a bank of mainframes on the left wall. Darting over to the massive computer banks, he slid on his thick-rimmed glasses and began to assimilate information far faster than any human could.

"So, you could manipulate that guard because of all the weird signals this place is giving off, yeah?"

The Doctor poked a circuit board with his forefinger and then quickly retreated when he was showered in a flare of orange sparks. "Something like that…ooh, now this is odd…no, not odd, _interestingly_ odd…" He jogged sideways to scrutinize a small green screen with thousands of flashing segments of code. "The Rift's effects are getting worse. Someone here is increasing the energy input exponentially until…"

"Until what?" From the Doctor's expression, Martha was sure it wasn't any kind of good 'until'.

"Until we soon won't be able to stop it. People will go mad – change into…into…" He blinked, looking vaguely at the wall like it was a quantum singularity. "Into _things_," he finally decided. "'Course, the past will completely freeze over by that stage, so they technically won't be _things_ for very long, but…"

"But we're going to stop it, right? I mean, right now, you can shut this thing down, yeah?"

The Doctor flipped several huge buttons and looked at the readouts again. He raised a brow as if something was puzzling him. "We can't just turn an off switch," he eventually explained. "We have to power it down gradually – and that's going to take time."

Martha dared to smile, just a little. "Well, if there's one thing we have plenty of it's time – I mean, _Time Lord_, right?"

The Doctor huffed as if he suddenly didn't deserve the title, and then bounded across the room to face two huge metal doors that looked like they belonged in an aircraft hangar, not a lab.

He glared at the access hatches a moment longer and then pulled back a lever in the wall with a quick yank that told Martha he was far from happy.

The titanium barriers began to squeal as they slid back on huge metal runners inset in the floor.

It took just two minutes for the plates to vanish altogether into two orifices in the concrete walls.

What greeted them the other side was far beyond anything Martha could have imagined.

The second, hidden half of the room seemed to have been engulfed by a huge vortex of colour that swirled absently. And the pulsing maelstrom appeared almost alive, its epicentre throbbing with energy that filled the air in the form of static.

The Doctor reached out a hand towards the mass and tiny spikes of electricity bounced from his fingertips.

"It's _beautiful_!" He turned to Martha, shaking his head. "Beautiful, but oh so very deadly…"

"So this is like some huge time/space tunnel tearing into the Universe?" Martha put a foot forward and felt her whole body repelled by the sheer power of the eddy oozing from the thing.

The Doctor nodded. "And it shouldn't be here. Some_ very_ naughty person has been poking their nose into a timeline that doesn't belong to them." He pointed to a bizarre-looking lump of metal that seemed to be bleeding energy into the Rift through a network of wires and conduits along the floor, walls and ceiling.

"Looks like we might be dealing with some totally freaky green aliens trying to fry the galaxy after all then?"

The Doctor shrugged and strode purposefully over to the jury-rigged generator that burbled innocently despite its nature. He kneeled at its side, taking in every nut, every bolt, every alien piece of technology that allowed it to function.

Martha tried to follow, but as she grew closer to the vortex, the pressure on her body intensified until she felt nauseous and lightheaded. Only the Doctor's own alien attributes saved him from the discomfort.

He looked up as Martha leaned over, taking deep breaths to quell the sickness now rising in her stomach. "Better not come any closer…too much exposure, even for a short while might be….well…not a good idea."

Martha nodded. "Now you tell me…" She wiped the back of her arm across her brow, thinking of the soldier outside. How much of this had he been exposed too? How much had he already been _changed_? "So, what have you found? Sontaran, Slitheen, what?"

The Doctor sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Ooh, I'm afraid it's worse than that. A lot worse…" Striding back to Martha he began tinkering with the sonic's setting once again. "I don't know who built this thing, but they're using a vortex manipulator and some other very interesting pieces of technology to fuel it…very clever…no, wait, not just _very _clever…genius almost…"

Martha couldn't help but grin. "And here I thought you were the only genius in the room."

He cocked his head. "Well…since you mention it…"

"So, basically we have an alien mastermind running around 1972 Earth with stolen pieces of alien technology trying to blow us all up?"

The Doctor frowned, taking another long glance at the generator and then the bank of computers on the wall behind him. The mainframes chirped in response to his gaze, huge reels of tape whirling around as they processed thousands of variables.

"I don't think this was built as a weapon…no…that's a side effect, a ripple, an unexpected event…an anomaly, a…"

"But still, whoever built this shouldn't be here, and they must know what damage they're doing, yeah?" Martha paused as if something had just hit her. "Vortex manipulator? Isn't that a Time Agent's standard equipment?"

The Doctor nodded. "Messy things…no control per se, you just zap off and hope you land in the right century. 'Course, whoever adapted this one has accounted for all the possible differentials as well as the temporal drift…"

"But who and why?" Martha didn't actually care about the why as long as they could stop the planet, timeline and Universe from imploding, but if they couldn't, then it would be nice to know exactly_ who_ had caused the human race's demise.

The Doctor whirled, brown overcoat flaring out with the speed of the motion. His eyes sparked with both mirth and intrigue and he stared at the security door they'd entered via and then nodded.

"Dunno," he admitted. "But I think the _Big Cheese_ is headed our way, so we're about to find out!" He clasped his hands together excitedly.

"Doctor, that's actually a_ bad_ thing. As in we're about to get caught!"

"Is it? Oh, _right_!" He grabbed Martha's wrist without further ado and swiftly dragged her across the room, pulling her into a small niche behind the banks of computers they'd pored over only moments earlier.

The space was tight, almost claustrophobic, and Martha could feel the Doctor's twin heartbeats as she huddled in next to him. Unlike her own, the throbbing was still unhurried, and when she looked up into his eyes all she saw was amusement, not fear. _Doesn't he ever get scared?_

But deep down, she knew he did.

She closed her eyes, not wanting to remember the time when he had said the words to her, but the memory of a starship close to burning up came anyway.

"_I'm scared…I'm so scared…"_

Martha hoped she never heard him utter those words again.

From within the room a hiss signalled the security door had opened and someone was entering. From the angle they were jammed into the crevice, there was no way they could see the newcomers, but they could hear them.

"And you're sure our prisoner is still confined to his cell?" The voice was crisp and commanding, like the man had been giving orders all his life rather than taking them.

"Yes, sir, Mr Tesla. I checked on him myself. He isn't going anywhere."

"Then how do you explain the unauthorized access to the Schism? I gave explicit orders…"

"The guard insists no one passed into this room, sir…"

The Doctor grinned and Martha couldn't help but join him. Apparently, Time Lords were pretty good at Jedi mind control.

Tesla wasn't so impressed. "I want the facility locked down. Every inch secured by manned patrols. Don't trust the security systems…" He moved towards the wormhole that appeared to have been labelled 'the Schism', hands clasped behind his back.

And finally, from the angle he was standing, Martha and the Doctor got a clear view of their enemy.

Nikola Tesla appeared to be in his mid-sixties. He was just under six feet tall and had lost most of his hair, only thin areas of grey remaining above his ears. His features were sharp and angular, and his eyes as piercing as the Daruthian sun.

Tesla stared into the heart of the vortex, standing closer than even the Doctor had dared. After a moment, he sighed and turned back to the lieutenant who had entered with him.

"If anyone else is allowed to enter this room without my authorization, I want the man on duty removed, _permanently_. Do I make myself clear?"

The officer's throat bobbed, but he nodded. "Crystal clear, sir."

Tesla's eyes fixed on the airman for just a split second, then he frowned and whirled to gaze at the bank of computers the Doctor and Martha were hiding behind.

The mainframes continued to hum and buzz, and eventually the scientist seemed satisfied. Striding to the console the Doctor had examined, he checked several readouts and then strode briskly from the room with the MP in tow.

As the door hissed closed behind the two men, the Doctor bobbed from his hiding place and scratched at his head absently. "I'd heard the rumours, but this is incredible! No…wait, not incredible, it's it's…"

"Who is he?" Martha butted in, not wanting to wait while the Time Lord rambled for another two sentences.

"Nikola Tesla was a genius, a man of vision, a scientist, one of the greatest electrical engineers of his time…and then there's his work in electromagnetism…and…"

"Was, as in past tense?" Martha's brow shot up.

"_Well…"_ The Doctor shrugged. "He died in 1943 at the age of eighty-six…"

"He looks pretty good for a guy who's been dead for nearly thirty years." Martha put a hand on her hip. "Even if his death was a cover up, he couldn't look like that…"

"Try telling him that!" The Doctor began to study the console again as if the new information somehow helped him solve the puzzle. His dark eyes danced over the codes displayed, and every few seconds he fidgeted with the glasses now hanging from the edge of his nose.

"Maybe he's come up with some kind of Lazarus device?" Martha theorized. "If not, and he isn't some species of alien, then how can he be over a hundred and look like that?"

"Really good moisturizer? I mean, really, really,_ really_ good moisturizer?"

Martha ignored the quip. "It's not like he's the guy from _Highlander_ or anything…"

The Doctor's left brow ticked up, followed by his right. "Hope not," he mumbled vaguely. "Don't want to have to lop his head off. Ooh…that could be messy, messy, messy…." He stopped tinkering with the controls and looked up, eyes narrowing. "…and I don't think the sonic screwdriver is up to it…"

"So, who is he?"

"Too ugly to be Peter Pan. How about Methuselah? No wait…not old _enough_…"

"But he's the one who made the timeline change, yeah? I mean he's obviously in charge here. And just who is this prisoner?" Martha leaned over to see what the Doctor was doing, but he'd already whipped off his glasses and began to jog across the room.

"Don't know who or what Tesla is…or even if he_ is_ Tesla, come to think of it. Methinks it's time to find the mystery prisoner and offer them a get out of gaol for free card." The Doctor cocked his head. "Unless he's a weevil…might have to leave him there then…not good to have weevils on the loose ya know!"

"Yeah, but don't we have to worry about getting out of here first, anyway?"

The Doctor grinned.

He never did worry about anything.

Travelling through the complex warren of corridors that made up the underground section of Montauk wasn't easy. While the psychic paper had helped their initial entrance, Tesla now had every guard on the base looking for them – and most of these airmen had their own brand of psychic skills.

Still, so far the Doctor had managed to steer clear of all the patrols and head in the general direction of the confinement area.

He'd taken out six sets of cameras and four security doors with the sonic screwdriver and was currently working on the fifth.

"There!" He exclaimed as the latch clicked open. "Piece of cake!"

"Maybe you should take up cat burglary?" Martha suggested as she slid inside.

The Doctor scrunched up his face. "Not really into cats…why would I want to start stealing them…?"

Martha rolled her eyes but didn't answer. It appeared they'd dodged inside the passageway leading to the cells, and only one more door separated them from their elusive inmate.

The only problem was, there were two armed guards standing watch outside the chamber and both were over six feet tall and armed with rifles – rifles Martha had no doubt they'd use after Tesla's recent order.

"I don't suppose the Jedi trick would work on those two?"

The Doctor shook his head.

"Thought so," Martha sighed and looked around the section of corridor they were standing in. One wall had a rack filled with white lab coats, and they reminded her of a time when she'd worn something similar back at the Royal Hope Hospital.

That all seemed such a long time ago now, even though it wasn't.

On a whim, Martha plucked one of the coats down, but it was two sizes too large. She tried again, until the fourth lab coat actually fit her.

"Um…what are you doing?"

Martha stuck a hand in the Doctor's overcoat pocket and fished around until her fingers clasped the psychic paper. "Playing doctor," she beamed. "You can lock that door permanently with the screwdriver if you need to, right?" She bobbed at the still open security door they'd just 'jimmied'.

"Well yes, but…" For once, he looked clearly perplexed.

"Good." Martha turned and headed straight for the two guards. "Now just stand back and watch _this _doctor do her magic…"

The Doctor stepped back and let his back lean against the wall, hiding himself in the shadows. He grinned, folding his arms and following Martha's orders to simply _watch._

Martha had no clue if the Doctor would do as she'd asked, but somehow she could feel the heat radiating from the ear-to-ear grin she just knew he was wearing.

He may be the most unpredictable man on the planet – no, in the Universe – but his expressions? Well she could read them like a book.

Smiling to herself, even though she was getting a knot in her stomach, Martha picked up the pace until she was almost running. She had to look harried if this plan was going to work.

Skidding into the next section of corridor, she held up the psychic paper as she approached the guards. "Dr Martha Jones, G Wing," she identified herself. "There are two unauthorized intruders in section H!" Pointing back towards the Doctor, she began to ramble, hoping the men where already on the alert after Tesla's orders. "Hurry, I think they're trying to get into the main project room!"

The MP on the left instantly flicked the strap of his weapon off his shoulder, taking a more aggressive pose, but he didn't move.

"_Hurry!_ What are you two waiting for? If they get inside, Mr Tesla will want blood…"

The mention of Tesla seemed to strike fear into the hearts of both men, as if he were more than just a project leader. Martha could see the terror in their eyes and the panic form on their stoic faces as if she'd condemned them to death already.

"Show us," the first guard commanded, ushering Martha back in the direction she'd come with his rifle.

"We shouldn't leave the prisoner…" The second man was hesitating, throwing wary glances back at the hatch in the cell door. "We were given explicit instructions from the lieutenant."

The first MP grunted. "I'll take Tesla's orders over the LT's anytime." He slid up to the cell hatch and took a peek at the prisoner. Satisfied their captive wasn't going anywhere, he pointed with the rifle barrel again, wiping sweat from his brow with one arm as he spoke. "Alright, doctor, show us…"

Martha nodded and turned tail, her mind screaming that both soldiers were perspiring heavily. And she hadn't missed how badly the one pointing the gun's hands had been shaking as he'd barked at her, either.

Were they _that_ scared of Tesla? Or was she witnessing even more effects from the Rift, or Schism, or whatever the dang thing was called?

The physician in her ignored the implications and possibilities and she carried on back towards the security door. As she rounded the corner, there was no sign of the Doctor – at least not until she took a second look.

He was hiding in the shadows, just a hint of his brown overcoat showing if she squinted in the dull fluorescent lighting. "Through there," she yelled, feigning a hint of panic. "I don't know if they're armed…"

The two airmen seemed to react to the alarm in her voice and pushed past her, barrelling into the passageway ahead without even thinking they were being led astray.

As soon as the second man's legs had passed over the threshold of the security door, the Doctor bounded from the shadows and slapped the emergency seal with the palm of his hand.

The metal groaned as it slid back into place, the hydraulics hissing melodramatically like some wild sci-fi movie effect.

From beyond the door, Martha could already hear the MPs shouting in protest as they'd realized the deception. Within seconds, a loud knocking signalled one of them was bashing at the door with his weapon in a futile attempt to gain access.

And while the men shouted, the Doctor worked, flicking settings on the sonic screwdriver to permanently lock the guards out of the section.

"There!" he exclaimed. "It's like the Bastille in here now!"

Martha wasn't impressed. "And look how _that_ ended…besides, I don't want to get stuck _in_ a prison!"

"Not to worry!" The Doctor smiled breezily, heading off for the cells. "I'm sure there's a back door! There's always a back door! Or a trap door, or a tunnel, or an escape pod…or bars you can chew through…"

"Chew through?" Martha asked breathlessly as she darted after the Doctor.

"Or maybe I'm thinking of a _Mars _Bar then…" He stopped in front of the metal door and frowned, as if he was uncertain of what to do next. Taking a step forward, he closed one eye and peeked through the open hatch.

After a second, he backed up and blinked. "_Riiighttt…."_ He mumbled slowly, as if he wasn't entirely assimilating what he'd seen.

Then he fell silent, simply staring at the hatch with one brow raised.

If Martha hadn't known better, she'd have said the Doctor was speechless – except he was _never _speechless. By his own admission he had a 'big gob'.

But now, now he was peculiarly quiet, and the odd expression that had seeped across his face was equally puzzling.

Was he surprised, upset, _scared?_

Martha pushed past the Time Lord and stood on tiptoes to get a view of the prisoner, and then her eyes widened….

_TBC..._


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

_Chapter Three_

Martha moved away from the hatch and took a breath.

The Doctor watched her reaction, gauging it. If she had expected to see a monster, she'd received a surprise, but that didn't change the fact that this was a situation the Time Lord would rather not be in.

The prisoner shouldn't be here now.

They shouldn't meet like this – _couldn't_ meet like this if the original timeline was to be preserved.

"Well don't just stand there! Get him out!" Martha almost stomped out the command, and after a brief second, the Doctor did as he was bid.

There would be plenty of time for explanations – he hoped.

Scurrying up to the cell's lock, he worked silently with the sonic screwdriver until the room's defences finally gave way. As the metal door moved aside, Martha pushed past him to get to the smiling captive lounging on a sparse metal bunk.

"Jack!"

Martha's cry was so affectionate the Doctor half expected her to grab the man and never stop squeezing. Of course, she was so happy that Tesla's prisoner was a person rather than an alien creature with six heads, she'd failed to notice a few details.

For starters, 'Jack' looked a good deal younger than the version they knew.

Nevertheless, his infectious grin remained the same. "Sweetheart, with a face like_ that_, you can call me anything you like." He pushed up from the bunk, swinging his legs onto the floor so he could better appraise his unexpected visitors. He looked the Doctor up and down and then stared at Martha approvingly.

"Stop that! Will you just _STOP!_" In any century, the Doctor knew exactly what this one was thinking, and he wasn't having any of it.

Jack Harkness, or whatever he was calling himself at this precise time, was a flirt who tended to let his feelings get the better of him sometimes – well, most times, actually.

Jack shrugged but the slightly lewd smile still remained. "Hey, jealous, I don't mind sharing. Three was always my lucky number."

The Doctor slapped the palm of his hand to his forehead. "He gets worse as he gets younger…"

"Younger?" Martha shifted her eyes from Jack to the Time Lord and then back again. Finally, she realized what her companion was getting at. "He's not exactly the Jack we know..?" She raised a brow.

Jack's frown indicated he was pretty much as perplexed as the new girl. "Hey, much as I'd _like_ to get to know you, I've never set eyes on you two before. Should I have?" His eyes narrowed.

"Not yet," The Doctor mumbled. "But it's too late to avoid it now…" He paced a little, ignoring the strange look both Jack and Martha were giving him. Eventually, he set his gaze on Jack. "You came here from the 51st century?"

Jack crossed his arms and perched himself back on the edge of the bunk. "Oh, I get it, Tesla sent you two to try and interrogate me after his last attempt failed. Sorry guys, but I ain't talking. Drugs didn't work, so this little charade sure isn't going to."

Martha almost laughed and jerked a thumb towards the Doctor. "Does he really_ look_ like he could interrogate anyone? _Talk_ them to death, maybe, but _interrogate_?"

"Oi!"

Jack scrutinized the Doctor again and then laughed. "You may have a point. But if you're not batting for Tesla, then what are you doing here? You gotta know if he finds you creeping around he'll have you tossed in this cell with me."

"The Rift…hole in time, Schism…whatever you want to call it. We're here to stop it." The Doctor stared at Jack. "It's killing the universe, but I think you already know that, don't you?"

Jack sighed, letting his eyes fall on the cold white walls of his cell rather than look at the man quizzing him.

The Doctor didn't let his own gaze falter. The pieces were all fitting together now, even if Martha hadn't put the jigsaw into perspective yet.

This Jack was from a time _before_ they'd ever known him.

This was Jack, the Time Agent, not the Torchwood leader.

The Doctor's eyes fell on the nametag on the uniform Jack wore and his mouth quirked into a small smile.

Lieutenant B. Shane.

"What happened? You were sent here to check on the disturbances Tesla was causing in the Rift, but instead of stopping him, he stole your vortex manipulator and used it to augment his experiment?"

"Something like that," Jack admitted. "I spent eighteen months working my way undercover into this place and…"

"_And_?" Martha pushed.

"And…I got caught, obviously."

"Bet there was a woman involved," The Doctor tutted. "Or a man…or knowing _you_…"

Jack grinned again. "You really _do _know me, don't you? And as a matter of fact, it was a very pretty nurse named Amy…"

The Doctor feigned surprise. "What, just the one?"

"Well, there was that one MP up in G section…"

The Doctor resisted the urge to swat the Time Agent. "Don't start _again..!"_

"Alright, alright," Jack held up his hands in submission. "So, let me get this straight, you two have somehow met me in time somewhere in my future? So basically, you guys know me, but I don't know you – _yet_?"

"And you're here," Martha continued. "Because the Time Agency got wind something dodgy was going on at Montauk and sent you back to investigate?"

Jack nodded. "Pretty much. The vortex manipulators aren't exactly accurate. I was lucky I got the right century, let alone made it two years before my target date."

"Told you those things were bad…or_ will_ tell you so…_or_..." The Doctor rolled his eyes. "_Anyway_…when you did get in here, you got yourself caught, fraternizing with some nurse?" He gave the Time Agent a disapproving look. "And now your cranky, extremely, incredibly, enormously unstable piece of technology is in the hands of a madman intent on blowing up the universe?"

Jack sighed again and let his head lean against the wall. "Well, when you put it like that…yeah." He shot Martha a look. "Is he always this much fun to be with?"

Martha nodded, a mischievous glint in her eye. "You have _no_ idea…"

"I get the feeling I will someday." Jack sat up again and glanced at his watch. "Guys, I hate to break this to you, but it's almost feeding time here at the Tesla zoo of handsome primates. I'd hate for the guards to come spoil our little tea party…"

The Doctor scowled.

"I think he's trying to say it's time we moved," Martha suggested helpfully. "As in run _really_ fast and hope there's another way out besides the one we came through…"

"Told you!" The Doctor rocked cheerily on the balls of his feet. "Always another way out!"

"Yeah, right past the guard's checkpoint desk," Jack offered less than helpfully. "_Sheesh,_ you two aren't exactly the Marines when it comes to a rescue party, are you?" He pushed up from the bunk anyway, pointing to a set of chains that connected each ankle.

The Doctor looked at the manacles distractedly and then pulled out his sonic screwdriver, giving it a stern scowl of dissatisfaction. "Need something a little less…um…"

Martha pulled a pin out of her hair and waggled it under his nose. "A little less _technologically_ inclined?" She grinned, dropping to her knees to deftly pick the locks on the leg chains.

"_Riggghtht_!" The Time Lord leaned in close, watching as she worked. "Now where _on Earth_ would a nice girl like you pick up a – um…habit like that?"

"U.N.I.T.," Martha obliged. "But I'm not sure I was _on_ Earth at the time…" She winked and the Doctor backed off.

Martha had changed so much since they had first met. She'd grown from a very intelligent trainee doctor to a highly trained government operative. He wasn't sure he liked the life-changing role he'd somehow forced on her.

Jack, however was much more appreciative. "Sweetheart, I think I need to offer you a job…"

"You already have," Martha pulled away the chains and cocked her head slightly. "Or will, in about thirty-six years…"

Jack shook his head and leaned to rub absently where the ankle chains had chaffed his legs. "Guess I'm smarter than the average bear no matter what century I'm in." He winked.

"Oh _please_…" The Doctor gestured towards the cell door and beyond. "Time to make a heroic exit, find the second generator, kill it and the one in the project room, confront Tesla, stop him, save the world _and_…"

"He doesn't want much does he?" Jack gave Martha a look that said he thought the Doctor was a little less than sane, but he followed the Time Lord out of the holding room anyway.

Once into the secondary corridor, the Time Agent had to do a double take to locate his rescuer's position. The Doctor had already bounced to the end of the clinically-white passageway and was hovering, trying to decide which way to go next that wouldn't involve soldiers.

"You might want to take a right," Jack suggested knowingly. "Although, maybe we should just talk over exactly _where_ we're headed before we make any more decisions?"

"Like I said," the Doctor mumbled as he fiddled with another security lock. "We have to shut this place down before it shuts down the entire Universe and beyond!"

"Well first you might want to consider what might be on the_ other_ side of that door," Jack warned, stepping warily to one side as the over-active Time Lord continued to meddle with a coded door panel.

"Really?"

The metal door slid back with surprising ease to reveal a short, and very stocky airman whose shirt bore sergeant's stripes.

The sergeant's face screwed up as he spotted the Doctor, and he instantly reached for his sidearm.

The weapon came about six inches from it's holster before Jack Harkness managed to twist the soldier's arm around and snap the automatic from his grasp.

Twirling the gun around so the butt fit in his palm, he slid off the safety and pointed it at the airman's temple.

The position lasted for all of two seconds and the Time Agent found he was being relieved of the automatic – although, not in nearly as graceful a move.

The quirky Time Lord simply swatted the military issue weapon from his hand and quickly booted it to the end of the corridor in a fairly passable impersonation of David Beckham

"Oi! Didn't I tell you _no guns_!" He thought about it and then winced. "Although, actually…maybe not _this_ decade. Going to have to teach you everything all over again…"

Jack spun around and for a second the Doctor thought he was going to have to duck a very heavy right hook. While the Jack Harkness he knew would never hit him – at least, he didn't think he would – this was a very different young man he was dealing with here.

This Jack had much to learn about himself and the Doctor. Indeed, he had much to learn about the universe, time travel, and the consequences of his own actions.

_This_ Jack would soon become something of an outlaw, a rogue who traded in derelict ships and stolen technology.

The Doctor's eyes widened, preparing for the punch, but it didn't come.

Jack simply shook his head and winced. "For crying out loud! I'm running around with the original Greenpeace poster child!"

"Um fellas…" Martha broke up the bickering, tugging at Jack's shirt sleeve just enough to make him look up.

The sergeant they'd disarmed had backed up and was standing in the centre of the corridor, effectively blocking it.

The frown he had worn originally had changed. And now, his face didn't even seem human anymore.

Where pale blue eyes should have been, dark orange orbs swirled as if tiny fireflies had invaded the man's skull and were flitting around inside.

The soldier's upper lip ticked in one corner to reveal his clenched teeth and bubbling white foam that made it look like he had rabies.

In the hand that had clutched the forty-five, he now held a hunting knife that's serrated blade reflected under a nearby flickering light tube. He flexed muscles in his arm, turning the cruel-looking weapon just enough to gauge his enemies' reaction.

"Great, just great," Jack cussed holding a hand out defensively in front of him in case the man attacked. "You gonna try taking that off him too?"

The doctor sighed and slowly removed his long brown overcoat. "_Well…_"

Without giving Jack or the airman a chance to react, he dived forwards like a matador lunging at a very angry bull. Using the coat in front of him like it could somehow protect him, he danced lithely around the first stabbing motion, causing the sergeant to almost overbalance.

The soldier corrected his footing just in time and jabbed again and again at the coat, and the lunatic wielding it.

"He's _nuts!_" Jack simply stared at the wild tango taking place in the passageway like it was a mirage. "Must be the drugs Tesla gave me…this can't be real…"

Martha tried to push past him. "Don't just stand there, go help him!" She shot the Time Agent a look that said 'Her Jack would never behave like this' and then she leapt headlong into the fray.

"You're gonna get yourselves killed!" Jack took one last look and turned tail, rapidly jogging down an adjoining corridor without glancing back.

The last words he heard before the walls muted the sounds of the fight were Martha's.

"You can't just leave us, you can't! Jack would never…"

But Jack didn't ever hear what came next, and Martha was suddenly too busy to care.

The Doctor was still trying to 'net' the airman somehow with his overcoat – a strategy that was proving pretty ineffective. Whatever had suddenly come over the man, it had given him the strength of three lions, and the determination of Sun Tzu himself.

And the Doctor should know, he'd met the latter enough times.

The problem was, the Doctor didn't want to harm the man at all. He wasn't aware of his own actions, and he didn't deserve to get hurt or killed because of something Tesla's experiment had done to him.

And this was the by-product of the Schism's ever-growing energy field – the Doctor was sure of it.

"Doctor!" Martha yelled out just in time for him to dodge another swipe from the hunting knife. He scrunched his nose up at it, wondering how there could be a use for such a grotesque and dangerous thing in the world.

The sergeant seemed to see the expression and it pleased him. Whatever abhorrence the Doctor felt for such weapons, this man felt the polar opposite.

He was enjoying the battle.

He wanted to hurt, to maim, to _kill._

Somehow, as the Doctor parried another blow, Martha mustered enough energy and jumped forwards, wrapping her arms and legs around the airman until she was like a jockey riding a Grand National winner.

He instantly began to squirm and kick, bucking like a bronco.

Martha looked at the Doctor expectantly, and when he just blinked in amazement she glared back. "Well _do_ something!"

Before the dazed Time Lord could react, a fire extinguisher appeared behind the sergeant, apparently attached to Jack Harkness' arm.

Jack brought the canister down just hard enough to send the soldier – and Martha, sprawling, and then he winked at the Doctor, grinning as he dropped the extinguisher in favour of offering Martha a hand up.

"You didn't really think I'd deserted you, right?"

Martha brushed herself down and looked at the fallen man. Despite all her training, it was obvious she was still a physician at heart and she was tempted to check on him, even though she had no clue how to fix whatever was going on. "The thought had crossed my mind," she suggested absently as the Doctor tossed his coat back over his shoulders.

"What is it with you always having to make the grand entrance and exit?" The Doctor asked Jack, kneeling to pull up one of the sergeant's eyelids.

The orb beneath still glowed a fiery orange, and he let the lid flick back without commenting.

"Guess I'm the gung ho kinda guy…"

"You're something…" The Doctor mumbled in response.

Martha folded her arms again. "When you two have finished, can we make some kind of plan, yeah? We can't just run around here _hoping_ we fix things. Why can't we just go back and shut off the generator?"

"Maybe if I actually knew who I was working with it would help." Jack raised a brow and crossed his arms, suggesting he wasn't going to move until he got more answers. "Just _who_ are you guys?"

"I'm Martha Jones and this is…"

"The Doctor," the Time Lord finished, still staring at the sergeant.

"Doctor huh?" Jack smirked. "Well, keep up your full frontal assault attitude there and you'll be needing one…" He looked over his shoulder down the corridor as if he'd heard a sound.

Giving up further conversation, the Time Agent scooted over to where the Doctor had kicked the automatic and retrieved it. He checked the chamber and flicked on the safety, tucking the offending weapon in his belt to a look of disapproval from his companions.

He ignored the icy stares and cocked his head with a shrug. "Hey…doesn't mean I'm gonna shoot anyone!"

"So what do we do with him?" Martha pointed to the fallen airman. "We can't just leave him here."

Jack grabbed the soldier's wrists and began to drag him across to the passageway he'd used to make his 'getaway'. "I know just the place. And it'll be safe there while we have a little chat all about the wonders of time travel and whackos in long overcoats…" He looked at the Doctor pointedly and then nodded to the man he was trying to lug to his feet. "Are you gonna give me a hand here or what?"

The storeroom Jack had taken them to wasn't the biggest thing Martha had seen to use for a cell, but it would suffice. The place smelled of industrial cleaner and plastic bin liners, and the walls were filled with shelves and cupboards that reminded her of the caretaker's room back at her old school.

School – something that seemed so long ago and defunct now. She'd learned more in a few months with the Doctor than she had in years of formal education.

"There, that should hold him." Jack finished binding the soldier's wrists and ankles with a large roll of silver tape and then slapped on the airman's own set of handcuffs for good measure. "I _think_…"

The Doctor raised a brow, but he still seemed somewhat distant – had done since his tousle with the unconscious man. "For an hour or so at least…"

"Hour?" Martha questioned, forgetting the familiar odours in the room to focus on more important matters.

"I think the Rift energy affecting these people is growing exponentially towards a crux event, a final explosion of space, time, matter….everything we know…at least in this dimension, although there is definitely a chance of a ripple effect into a lot of parallel worlds too, given the evidence…"

"Is that your way of saying that if we don't stop this today out butts are pretty much toast?" Jack winced.

"_Well_…not toast," the Doctor offered helpfully. "More like a big juicy old scrambled egg! Planets, worlds, universes all imploding into each other with the force of millions of Big Bangs!"

"So not _my_ kind of Big Bang." Jack huffed.

"Oi!" Martha stepped between the two men who seemed to have more time on their hands than sense, despite the proximity of the end of the world. "Can we cut out the innuendo and actually _think_?" She looked at Jack, then turned to the Doctor. "You're the genius here, how do we stop this?"

Jack looked affronted that he'd been left as the obvious 'brawn', but folded his arms to listen anyway.

"The Rift or 'Schism' has two power sources. Whatever is feeding it in the project room isn't powerful enough to be giving it the kind of energy it needs…" He began to pace. "Secondary power source has to be somewhere close….we'd need to shut them both down together…_No wait!_ Human's probably can't enter the project room at this stage of the transition…"

"You know, Montauk has its own backup generator in case of nuclear attack? Cold War and all that," Jack offered helpfully. "I could show you where it is…"

The Doctor spun on his heels and clicked his fingers together. "Brilliant! I knew there had to be a reason why you were here!"

"Why do I feel offended?" Jack moved to the storeroom door and took a peek outside. Turning back to look at the Time Lord he asked, "What about these goons? Are we likely to meet any more freaks? Just so I know…"

"Oh yes…the energy the Rift is giving off is altering them both physically and mentally. The _human_ mind can easily be affected by sound and energy waves…"

"Love how you say human, Doc. You sure some of that energy hasn't affected _you_, given that little toreador show you gave us earlier?" Jack jerked a thumb towards the airman.

"He was this way before we got to Montauk, trust me," Martha interrupted with a small smile. "Is there any way to stop them, or fix them? I mean, we can't just leave them like this."

The Doctor slid on his glasses, even though there was nothing interesting to examine in the tiny closet. The sonic screwdriver appeared in his hand as if by magic and he tapped it in his palm as if tactile contact would speed up his thought processes.

"If I can access the facility's radar dish management systems, I could modify the receiver controls…use the dish to transmit frequencies that neutralize and counteract the Rift's effects…"

"That would fix them?" Martha asked, a glimmer of hope finally shining through the darkness that had threatened to envelope them.

The Doctor sighed. "I'm sorry…there's no way to reverse it, but it would stop them." He looked up. "It would mess with their brainwave activity enough to make them collapse, pass out…"

"And give us a clear run at shutting this place down," Jack concluded. "Just as long as none of Tesla's men catch us. I mean, this thing won't affect them all, right?"

"Right…it depends on exposure time."

"Are _we_ safe from it?" The thought suddenly hit Martha that she could turn into a Romero-style zombie before she ever saw home again, and the idea wasn't pleasant. But then, if she did, the world would probably implode an hour later, so it wouldn't matter.

"We haven't been exposed long enough." The Doctor wasn't joking now. Not at all, and that signalled to Martha just how grave the situation must be getting. "As long as we don't go back in the project room, we'll be fine."

"But don't we _have_ to go in there to shut the thing down?" Jack was getting edgy. It was obvious from the way he was fidgeting, eager to be on the move.

To DO something.

_Anything. _

"_Riiiigght_…I was hoping you hadn't noticed that…" The Doctor clasped his hands together, almost dropping the sonic. "What say we have a good old fiddle with the radar dish first then?" He dashed for the door before anyone could disagree and launched himself down the eerily silent corridor.

Walking backwards, he grinned. "Look at it this way, Jack wouldn't be here if the Rift hadn't started ripping into time and space, and yet, time and space couldn't have been ripped into if Jack and his vortex manipulator hadn't arrived! Time isn't linear, it's this big, huge, stonking ball of…"

"Wibbly, wobbly, timey, whimey stuff," Martha finished for him. "Yeah, we get that, but how does it help with shutting the generator down?"

The Doctor stopped his rapidly paced journey to the next security door and blinked. "It doesn't," he confessed. "But you're forgetting one _extraordinary _piece of the puzzle!"

Jack balked. "We are? Like…?"

The Doctor grinned and Martha knew it was that smug look he got when something silly and yet pure genius was about to leave his mouth.

"Yes! _ME! _ I said the _human_ mind and body can easily be affected by sound and energy waves…and last time I checked I was um…a bit more …_resilient_, yes that's the word…more resilient than you people!"

Martha was about to throw a mock punch his way for dissing the human race for what she was sure was more than the hundredth time, but she hesitated.

One, she knew that he meant it in the best possible way. He always brought up human flaws, but the Doctor was also twice as quick to point out how brilliant and innovative mankind could be.

And second, well, second she'd just noticed what appeared to be a tiny blood trail following the frenetic Time Lord down the corridor.

The blotches of scarlet weren't very big, but against the stark whiteness of the ceramic floor tiles they stood out like the ruddiness of a lighthouse beacon against a bleak night sky.

In an instant, Martha's mind flashed back to the 'bullfight' she'd been part of only minutes earlier. Maybe the insane airman's aim had been a little more accurate after all?

The Doctor seemed to lock onto her gaze and follow it until he was staring at his own shoes – shoes that had once been white. Now, the fabric had outwardly spreading patches of red that appeared to emanate from the blood dripping from beneath his overcoat.

He frowned. "_Oooh_…that can't be good…I think I'm dribbling!" Sliding his hand under the edge of his blue jacket he prodded a little too eagerly with his forefingers and they came away red and sticky. The sight didn't faze him. "Or maybe 'oozing' is a superior word," he considered. "I like superior, reminds me of me…_well_…mostly me…'course 'ooze' isn't the only superior word…how about 'leach'…"

Martha's face scrunched into a scowl. Why did he have to make light of everything? "_Doctor_!"

The Time Lord smiled goofily. "Nope…definitely oozing! Emphasis on _ooze_!" And with that, his eyes rolled back under his lids and he doubled over, hitting the floor in a boneless heap.


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter Four_

Martha felt like she was stuck in some horrible time warp where seconds lasted minutes and minutes lasted hours. At least, that was the way it appeared as she watched the Doctor tumble to the floor in painful slow motion.

His head seemed to bounce on the unforgiving tiles and then she was running towards him, even though she couldn't recall her mind giving the command to do so.

It was all automatic now, just as she'd been trained. Had he lived, her mentor, Mr Stoker, would have been proud of her.

As she reached the Doctor, she let her knees collapse beneath her, falling to his side as if she would always belong there.

"Doctor?" He didn't move, but she could quite clearly see the regular rise and fall of his chest. Hopefully, that meant he wasn't about to pull his 'regeneration' trick on her. She'd yet to be privy to that piece of Time Lord magic, and wasn't in any hurry to change that fact.

"Told you he was nuts…" Jack's shadow fell across the Doctor's crumpled form and Martha looked up for a second to see him watching her.

She ignored the comment and put her attention back on her silent friend. That was what she hated the most – the silence. He was never quiet, never so still like this.

Pulling away his overcoat, she noted blood had already soaked through his shirt and favourite blue jacket to form a large tacky patch. But what lay beneath?

Swallowing down a lump in her throat, she undid his jacket and stuck her fingers into the torn edges of his shirt, tearing the knife hole bigger until she could get a good look at the actual wound.

"Messy." Jack pulled a face at the gash. "Are you sure you should be poking around like that?"

Martha's eyes met the Time Agent's and her cold glare told him she knew exactly what she was 'poking', even before she opened her mouth to answer. "I'm a doctor, so, yeah, I know what I'm doing and what I'm poking, thanks."

Jack blinked and then shrugged, leaning against the wall of the corridor as if he had all day to ponder the new information.

"Two _doctors_…now why couldn't you have been two Green Berets, or maybe even two gorgeous _pole dancers_ but no, I gotta get medics who like to jump in front of guns, or knives or life-threatening wormholes…" He stopped ranting, suddenly feeling guilty considering he wasn't the one lying on the floor bleeding all over the place. "How bad?" He asked, looking down at the small crimson pool under the Doctor's left side.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Martha concluded, judging from the size and position of the entry wound. "A little blood goes a long way…"

At least, she hoped so.

Gallifreyan physiology wasn't exactly part of the curriculum where she'd studied medicine. And she guessed it wouldn't be any time soon either, given the Doctor's pretty extinct lineage.

"There's a medical kit back in the TARDIS. If we can get that I can patch him up." She pressed a hand over the still-bleeding injury, applying enough pressure to slow the flow until she could throw in a few stitches.

"Back in the _what_?"

"The TARDIS. It's a…um…kind of a ship…" Martha's mind conjured an image of the faithful blue police box but she decided it was best not to try to describe it to Jack. He already thought the Doctor was crazy, better not give him any ideas about _her _sanity too.

Jack pulled the automatic from his waistband and rubbed a hand over it as if he might need to use it sooner rather than later. "And don't tell me," he groaned. "This _ship_, it's not on the base grounds, is it?" When Martha shook her head, he slapped a hand against the wall. "Next time, use the valet parking, huh?"

Martha scowled. "Hey! I wasn't exactly the one doing the driving! Now can you get us out or what?" She looked down at her fingers, the lump in her throat returning as fresh blood began to seep through them.

The wound wasn't all that bad – the expert in her subconsciously knew that – but somehow, whenever it was the Doctor that was injured, she couldn't quite convince herself he was okay until…

Well, until he was bounding around again, blathering about time, space and the price of a new toaster at the local Tesco.

"Get you out?" Jack broke her nervous train of thought. "Oh, sweetheart, I can do better than that." He hunkered over and carefully slipped his arms under the gangly Time Lord.

Before Martha could protest about jostling her patient, he had the Doctor safely in his arms. "Jeez…I've known girls who've weighed heavier…"

"Jack? _Where?_"

He winked again, a thin, but extremely mischievous grin spreading across his features. "Trust me…I'm ugh…_not_ a doctor…"

* * *

Jack navigated Montauk base with all the ease of someone who worked there – because essentially he did. Or at least _had_, until Tesla had become wise to his true profession.

Taking just two short corridors, the Time Agent managed to miss three security patrols and find himself before a gunmetal grey door that stood slightly ajar as they approached. Security was obviously a lot more lax in this section.

Martha noted the engraved brass plaque that designated the area as the 'infirmary' as Jack twisted sideways to nudge it with his boot, teasing it open enough to carry the Doctor inside.

"Amy? It's me, honey, I'm home!" There was an air of sarcasm as Jack looked left and right for the missing 'Amy'.

"Guess she knew you were coming," Martha teased as she sized up the room, quickly looking for items she could work with. "Get him on the bed." She nodded towards an exam table that lay empty in the centre of the medical bay. If 'Amy' wasn't around to help, then Martha would deal with things on her own.

Jack nodded and was in the process of gently laying his burden down when a short brunette appeared from a second door at the back of the room. Her mouth opened and without thinking, she dropped the glass flask in her hand, the delicate container shattering into a myriad of pieces before the nurse could even draw another breath.

"Beau? They said…they said you'd been arrested." The nurse backed up a step although her eyes moved from Jack to the man he'd been laying down. "They said you weren't even _from_…and that you'd been _detained_…"

Jack cut her off. "Look, Amy, I swear I'll explain everything, but I kinda got a friend who could do with your help first?" He jerked a thumb towards the Doctor as Martha began to slip on a pair of latex gloves.

Amy hesitated, her wide eyes glancing towards the phone on her desk and the security camera on the wall. She was obviously scared: scared of Jack, scared of what was happening in her infirmary.

She blinked, finally settling her gaze on the injured man.

Martha looked up, her patience wearing thin with the girl who obviously had never been plunged into a crisis situation before, despite her qualifications. "Just get me a suture kit and some dressings and I'll do it myself, yeah?"

The irritated tone of Martha's voice seemed to move the girl and she scurried forwards until she was standing the other side the unconscious Time Lord. "How long ago did this happen?" There was a slight quiver to her words and she squirmed at the amount of blood Martha was mopping away from the gash.

"About fifteen minutes…"

Amy winced. "Stitching alone won't do…he needs blood…"

Martha pushed the comment aside and put her attention on Jack. He was clearly going to be of more use to her than Amy. "Jack, or should I say _Beau_, something to clean the wound, suture kit, medium sized dressings, fast as you can!" She frowned, glancing at the still-open infirmary door. "And better lock the door," she added as an afterthought.

Jack saluted, his voice tinged with just an edge of sarcasm. "Yes, _ma'am_."

He clicked the lock into place, and then shot Amy a bewildered look at her lack of action before beginning to rifle through the medical cabinets, tossing gauze, surgical tape, syringes and anything else he didn't need as he searched.

Amy still appeared shaken. "You're not just going to let him bleed to death! I don't know who you are, or why you're here but…" As she protested, she began to take a sample of blood from the Doctor, and Martha let her.

_She's the one who's going to be in shock,_ Martha thought as Jack tossed over the items she'd asked for. "You _can't _give him blood," she tried again to reason with the nurse.

Amy didn't seem to quite understand the implication. "We have our own blood bank here. Mr Tesla deemed it um…necessary with all the experiments conducted on site. There are sometimes…injuries…" She finished filling a small tube. "I'm sure I'll be able to find a match…"

_I wouldn't bet on it,_ Martha mouthed under her breath.

Amy didn't hear, or if she did she ignored the remark and scurried off through the door she'd appeared from. It was probably some kind of lab but Martha didn't really care – not as long as the peculiar-acting girl kept out of her way.

"_She's_ the one you got caught for?" she asked Jack incredulously as she worked on her patient. "_So_ not what I'd have pegged as your type…"

"Yeah, well, trust me, she's not normally that way. I think we got her spooked. I mean, she just found out her_ incredibly_ handsome lover isn't exactly from err…this part of town…" Jack smirked. "She'll get over it. A few words of Time Agent charm and she'll be eating out of my hand again…or maybe even…"

"Jack…"

"Alright, _alright_…" Jack turned to look down at the Doctor. He still hadn't moved, groaned or shown any sign of being in the land of the living. "So is she right? I mean I know she was all freaked out and acting weird, but _does_ he need blood?"

"No," Martha said with more confidence than she felt. "He'll be fine. Maybe you should go check on your nursemaid, though. Maybe she likes you so much she used the blood excuse to go call in the cavalry on us, yeah?"

Jack started. "Oh cra.." He darted across the room and was through the lab door before Martha could put in her last suture. As she tied off and covered her work with a dressing, she looked at the blood on her gloved hands and for the first time a tiny fragment of sell-doubt crept into her mind.

Sliding her hand to the Doctor's neck, she felt the steady throb of his pulse beneath her fingers. It was a little faster than normal, but he was in no danger of arresting, despite Amy being convinced otherwise.

She knew that from a previous experience with the Time Lord after he'd let a Plasmavore attack him and almost suck him dry.

And even then – after he had actually arrested – he hadn't needed a transfusion once she'd gotten his hearts beating again.

That had been their first meeting and she would never forget it.

No, the Doctor would be fine, so why was a highly trained nurse like Amy freaking out and thinking otherwise?

Okay, so Amy didn't know the Doc's past record with blood loss, but she hadn't even run through normal medical procedure before she'd panicked.

Martha thought about her old friend Julia from the Royal Hope hospital – she'd once reacted in the same way. Of course, on that occasion, they _had_ just been transported to the Moon by a group of space cops who looked like overgrown rhinos with attitude, but maybe the principle was the same. Some people just couldn't hack pressure.

Some people shook, cried, lost all common sense.

"Cup of tea..?"

Martha shook herself from the puzzle and looked down to see the Doctor peeping at her through one open eye as if he was peering down a telescope. A smile grew on his face and he opened the other eye. "You _always_ get tea and biscuits when you've lost blood. Tea's very good for the synapses, you know…all those free radicals…"

Martha smiled back, and internally heaved a huge sigh of relief. "That's when you've _given_ blood, not spilled it all over the floor after getting skewered!"

"It's always the little things with you people," the Doctor grumbled back, pulling himself into a sitting position on the exam table to prod at his tattered clothes. "Blimey! Shirt's totally _ruined_! Don't suppose you're any good at sewing, Martha Jones? 'Course you are…" He poked the newly-placed dressing, gently feeling his friend's handiwork below. "You're a doctor!" The smile on his face grew into the loopiest grin Martha had seen – definitely rivalling the one he'd once sported on a planet called Utopia.

"So are _you_," she countered.

"Nah, I'm more of a knitter, me…you should have seen the scarf I had in the seventies…" He sighed, then looked up, wincing as he stretched forwards.

At first, Martha thought his grimace was due the abundance of stitches she'd put in his side, but as she followed those deep brown eyes of his, she realized he was fixated on the infirmary clock.

"How long have we been here…?" His tone was so low she almost didn't hear him ask the question.

"Too long," she realized. "If you're right about us only having an hour or so to shut down the generator…"

The Doctor nodded. "We just wasted twenty minutes of it."

"Oh hey! He awake so soon?" Jack sauntered through the lab door back into the infirmary and placed himself in front of the exam bed. He looked the Doctor over curiously, as if the lanky and very zany Time Lord had amazed him yet again.

The Doctor peered back with an equal look of curiosity, then blinked before pinching himself. "_Well…_either I'm awake, or I'm talking in my sleep…"

"Sometimes I'd put my money on the latter," Jack teased. "Except right now, I'm betting we need you awake, right, Doc?" He turned and jerked a thumb towards the back room. "Especially as Amy's been freaking out ever since she tried typing your blood."

"Yeah, well, no surprises there then," Martha rolled her eyes and peeled off the bloodied gloves she'd been wearing. "How did she ever get a job in a place like this if she can't handle a little alien DNA?"

Jack shrugged. "I don't think it's the 'alien' part that's exactly freaking her out. It's the fact that she's seen it before somewhere."

The Doctor's blank expression instantly changed. "That's _impossible!_"

Jack huffed. "Why? You some kinda intergalactic dodo?"

"Actually, yeah, he is," Martha stepped forwards. "Amy must be wrong – she was flustered, panicking…"

Jack shook his head. "She looked pretty convinced to me. And I'll tell you something else. Wherever she'd seen it before? It scared the hell out of her."

The Doctor ignored the squabbling and swung his legs over the side of the exam table. As his All Stars hit the floor, he teetered a little and was thankful when Jack caught him under the arms.

"Whoa there, looks like you're not ready for the party just get." Jack steadied the Time Lord. "Maybe you should get back on the bed, huh?"

The Doctor eyed the exam table distractedly, his eyes wandering back to the lab door. "I'm fine…really, I'm fine," he mumbled, pulling his brown coat back around him to hide most of the damage to his jacket. "…But why would she think…?"

Without consulting either Martha or Jack, he strode past them, wavering a few times when his strength waned and he was forced to regain his balance by grabbing the nearby wall.

Jack looked longingly at the exam bed and shrugged. "Your loss. Amy and me had some real good times on that table…"

"You are _so_…" Martha threw a mock punch at the Time Agent and then quickly jogged after her patient. "Doctor, you don't think…?"

He stopped then, his angular features so intense Martha instantly knew _exactly _what he was thinking. He thought Jack was right, and somehow, Amy really had seen blood like his before.

But that was impossible, wasn't it?

"This place is like some huge research facility dedicated to everything extra-terrestrial, everything alien, everything _different._ That's me…and everything that was once me, or part of me…or…will be me…"

He let out a deep breath and Martha thought she was going to have to catch him and stop him from falling again like Jack had, but not because of the injury to his side.

Instead, he closed his eyes and she felt his pain, his loss – the baring of his soul all over again.

"What if…what if they somehow got Jenny's body, or a sample of her DNA? If they have a hole in time they could have; anything is possible…or…or…" The Doctor's eyes grew wider until Martha thought they might pop from his skull. "What if the Master…" He shook himself, slapping a hand into his forehead. "But I burned his body…"

Martha reached out and took his hand, pulling it away from his temple and squeezing it hard. She'd never seen him like this – not even the time he _had_ been scared. But she was here for him, and they'd figure this out together.

And then, they'd fix it, _together._

"Oi," she said softly. "Where's the genius who brought me here? You know, Time Lord who can save the universe with one flick of his sonic screwdriver?"

The Doctor inhaled, and when he looked up, his familiar lopsided grin had reappeared. "Sorry," he apologized. "Must be going soft in my old age. Or is that _older_ old age given my um…age?"

"If you two have finished making eyes at each other?" Jack broke the moment. "Shouldn't we be questioning Amy before she clams up altogether? My looks and magnetic appeal will only last so long, ya know?"

* * *

The Doctor moved so silently into the lab that Amy didn't even hear his approach. She was seated on a small stool, shaking her head as she looked down a microscope as if the slide in it held the secrets to the universe.

But then, given the slide's contents, maybe it did.

If the nurse had appeared flustered before, she looked downright over the edge now. Her hair was tousled and her cheeks flushed red with panic.

"Hello there!" The Doctor's voice was friendly and just a little too loud as he stepped up next to the girl, hands in his pockets. "You must be Amy then?"

Amy jumped so hard she rocked backwards on the stool and almost fell off. Her startled expression turned to shock and for almost a minute she simply sat in stunned silence.

"You…you shouldn't even be conscious…" She finally mumbled, her eyes looking the Time Lord up and down as if he were a mirage.

"Funny that." the Doctor raised a brow conspiratorially. "Jack seemed to think the same thing. 'Course, it's _really_ too early for a nap. I'd be missing the best part of the day! And a _lovely_ day it is too! Or was, until the Rift started sucking energy left right and centre…" He shuffled forwards, his dark-rimmed glasses already hanging in place on the edge of his nose. "Mind if I take a gander and see what all the fuss is about then?"

When Amy didn't protest, he took a peek down the microscope and adjusted the focus just a touch. Whatever he'd expected to see, it wasn't quite what was on the slide.

Suddenly feeling the need to be seated, he flopped down onto another stool and blinked, his expression close to that of Amy's only seconds earlier. "Close, so _very _close…but not Jenny's…not even a partial match for _my_ DNA at all…and not the Master's…and yet…" He leaned his arm on the table and rested his chin in the palm of his hand, staring vacantly at the nearest wall.

"So are you gonna tell us what the peep show here is all about?" Jack hovered next to Amy. "I mean, didn't you say the clock was ticking?"

The Doctor sighed. "Tick tock…" He murmured. "The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on…or _something_ like that." He jumped up, rubbing his hands together. "_Anyway_…Amy-wamy, just where did you get that second sample?"

The nurse looked even more scared, if that was at all possible. Her terrified eyes fixed on Jack and she looked at him pleadingly.

"It's okay, you can tell us. We're not here to hurt you, I swear," he tried to soothe.

Amy swallowed and then looked back to the Doctor. He was staring at her, but his smile was warm and pleasant. "Mr Tesla hasn't always been in charge here at Montauk," she began, her voice shaking as it had earlier. "At one time, we had a different director, and Tesla was just head of his department."

"But Tesla wasn't happy being the underdog, yeah?" Martha queried.

"I…I don't know," Amy admitted, fumbling with her hands as she fidgeted on her stool. "All I know is Director Brake ordered a full medical and psychological workup on all personnel at the facility, including Mr Tesla. He said there could be no weak links in a complex as top secret as Montauk."

"And?" Jack probed.

"I used to have a co-worker, Catherine. She had Tesla's bloodwork to complete. She saw the slide…" Amy pointed to the microscope. "She showed it to me, said it couldn't be right. I mean…Tesla's not _human."_

"So how come he's running the place now and not locked up like Jack was?" Martha strode across the lab and leaned over the microscope, taking a look at the alien cells for herself.

"Catherine disappeared, and the next day Director Brake was gone and Tesla was in charge. No one dared to query his authority…people were…_changing_, becoming paranoid…"

Martha huffed and shot Amy a glance. "You don't say."

"No one knew I had a sample of Tesla's blood still on file or maybe I'd have vanished too by now." Amy stuffed her hands in her lab coat pockets and didn't say any more.

Maybe she thought she had already said too much.

"Okay, so Tesla is an alien," Jack observed, less than impressed. "That makes what? _Three_ of us? I get that he's some bad boy who needs his butt spanking for the whole Schism thing, but what's so scary about his blood?"

The Doctor pushed up from the stool and drew in a breath. All of his usual mirth had vanished. This couldn't be happening, but it was. "Because like me, he's from the planet Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborous…"

"But he _can't_ be," Martha moved to the Doctor's side. "_You're_ the last…your planet was destroyed…"

"I should have realized…the technology powering the Schism, the pure genius behind the matrix controlling the energy vortex…" He ran a hand through his hair, eyes growing wild and wide again as the realization that he was not alone hit home.

Jack tapped his watch impatiently. "_Hello_, can I get the abridged version here before I die of old age or the planet actually explodes as per your prediction?"

"Don't worry, you're not likely to die of old age_,"_ Martha mouthed almost inaudibly, and then coughed, hiding her little slip of the tongue.

The Doctor scowled at her for almost letting out 'spoilers' but realized Jack was right. Whatever Tesla was, his out of control project should be their first priority. They could deal with the renegade later.

He faced everyone in the room and his brow scrunched as he finally said the words he'd tried to deny since looking down the microscope. "Tesla is a _Time Lord_…"

"And this changes things how?" Jack countered, obviously unimpressed with the revelation.

"It makes him _my_ responsibility." The Doctor shared a look with Martha and she remembered how he had handled the Master. That wasn't something she wanted to ever relive.

The year that never was.

Death, mayhem, madness….

"Listen, first off, we shut down the generators, yeah? Tesla can come later." Martha tugged at the Doctor's sleeve, hoping he would see sense.

For so many years he had thought he was alone, travelling far across the heavens, the last of his kind. But every time that myth was shattered, it brought with it a great sadness.

Jenny, the girl who for the very briefest of moments had been his daughter, and who had ultimately died in his arms.

The Master, the renegade Gallifreyan who had chosen to die rather than share a life with the last of his brethren.

And now, Tesla.

The Doctor turned to look at Martha knowingly and nodded, just a tiny hint of his usual jovial self shining through. "Martha Jones! Right as always! You've been around _me_ too long, you have…I must be rubbing off!" He slid the glasses from his nose and stuffed them into his abyss-like pockets. "Right then! Time to go shut down a wormhole thingee before it eats everything like one of those Pac Man gizmos…"

Jack shot a glance at his watch. "How long do we have?"

"Oh, oodles of time, just _oodles_." The Doctor whirled towards the door of the lab and sprang towards it as if he'd never been injured. "In fact, fourteen minutes, twenty-five point two seconds…" he said far too cheerily. "How about that, then? We don't have enough time to worry about the time we don't have! _Ooh_, now that was a bit of a mouthful...mustn't try saying that when you're chewing a few peanuts…_messy_…"

"But you don't even have a watch! How can you…?" Jack reached to his waistband and tugged the automatic back out, following the Time Lord across the room. He hit halfway before something stopped him.

On the far wall of the lab was a small workstation. There was no keyboard or desktop computer, but a small black and white screen showed a view of the exterior security camera.

Gathered around the infirmary's main door was a group of people, some in uniform, some in white coveralls that suggested project staff.

All of them with the same spinning, radiant orbs as the sergeant who'd attacked the Doctor.

The throng seemed to have no real will of their own and shuffled together like a pack of animals who'd lost their alpha male. Some seemed to sense they had a purpose here and began banging on the outer infirmary door with their fists and elbows.

A female lab technician at the back of the cluster started to screech, words forming on her lips that were soon drowned out by the rest of the mob's fusion of screams.

Martha gaped at the fuzzy, line-filled screen as she realized the mass of people was growing by the second – and they were all yelling for one thing: to kill the people the other side the door.

"Whoa, I've been run outta town before for breaking a few hearts, but this is ridiculous!" Jack hesitated, torn between watching the monitor further and finding another escape route.

"Amy?" The Doctor took a hold of the young nurse's forearm and tried to sound calm. "Amy, is there another way out of the lab that doesn't take us back through the infirmary?"

She nodded, rubbing at her eyes as if she'd had a bad dream and it was all about to go away. "There's a second door. It's in the back of the storage area. No one really uses it much anymore." She slid from her stool and led them through a smaller doorway into a cubbyhole filled with lab supplies. Behind two large metal shelf units was a locked exit.

Amy tugged a keychain from her coat and reflexively chose the right key for the lock. "We can't see outside…there's no camera view in this section of corridor." Her voice seemed to crack. "There could be more of those…_things_…"

"Not _things_," The Doctor corrected, placing his hand over hers on the doorknob. "They're just people…_sick_ people."

Jack reaffirmed his grip on the automatic and pulled a face. "Yeah, well I'll remind you of that when they're trying to tear you a new one, Doc."

Martha pushed past both men and stood with her hands on her hips. Separating the two 'meatheads' was getting to be her new vocation. "Can we just _move_? Tick, tock, remember?"

"Ooh, full frontal assault, Charge of the Light Brigade style!" The Doctor twisted the key and swung open the door as if he hadn't a care in the word.

Before he could dart out into the passageway or at least even scan it with his sonic screwdriver, Jack had ducked past him and was moving left and right with his weapon drawn, scrutinizing the corridor for more 'zombies'.

The Doctor dived after him.

"No shooting the natives! No…no…_no…NO!" _

"_Yes!"_ Jack kept the handgun at arm's length ready to fire.

"_NO!"_

Martha barged after them. "God, it's worse than a repeat of _The Vicar of Dibley_…"

The Doctor turned. "What? Hmmn…always wondered what I'd look like in a dog collar…"

"Well somebody sure needs to keep you on a leash…" Jack grumbled, keeping his gaze, if not his mind, on the task at hand.

"What about me?" Amy had followed them out and was now peering at all three as if they'd gone stark raving mad. "I …I can't stay here…Tesla will know…"

"She's right," Martha agreed. "She'll have to come with us."

"Exactly _where_ are we going again?" Jack had reached an intersection in the hallway and had stopped, but he still hadn't put the automatic down despite the Time Lord's protests.

"The radar dish controls," the Doctor explained, leaping into the middle of the corridor, his coat whooshing behind him like Batman's cape. "We have to stop the um…changed…altered…"

"Zombies?" Martha offered helpfully.

"Um, yes…right…_zombies_." He scrunched up his nose and couldn't finish the sentence. It just seemed too rude, even for him. "We can't call them that! They're people!"

"_Were_ people," Amy corrected. "And they will kill us if we don't stop them."

Jack cocked his head. "Radar controls it is then, Doc." He winked waywardly. "And don't try touching my weapon. I'm kinda attached to it." He flexed his fingers over the butt of the gun and moved to the left of the adjoining passageway. "_Although_…"

The Doctor rolled his eyes to the ceiling tiles and shook his head. "Wouldn't dream of it," he mumbled, letting the Time Agent take point as their motley band headed towards the unknown.

* * *

Montauk was strangely quiet – too quiet, Martha decided as they hurried towards the base of the dish platform. Only minutes earlier the base had been alive with both security patrols and 'turned' staff members, but now, now everywhere was like a scene from the end of _The Omega Man_.

Maybe that was how it was going to be. They'd be lured into a false sense of hope, and then bam, the freaks would come out of the woodwork and slaughter them just like they had Chuck Heston in the movie.

Martha shuddered as she walked beside Amy, wishing she hadn't watched so many ancient films. _Definitely shouldn't have seen the Will Smith remake either,_ she chided herself – although she had to admit that Will was pretty hot, even if _I Am Legend_ was now a little too close for comfort.

She glanced at the Doctor.

Why did it seem like she had a thing for 'Mr Smiths'?

"Okay, at the end of this corridor there should be a security detail guarding the dish control room." Jack had stopped and was holding his automatic close to his chest, barrel pointed towards the ceiling. "As I'm the only one in uniform, maybe I should go first. Chances are by the time they recognise me I could be halfway to the checkpoint."

"And then what?" The Doctor scowled. "Gunfight at the Montauk Corral?" He waved his hand about dismissively. "Do you always want to shoot people before breakfast?"

Jack flicked off his weapon's safety and shrugged. "Nah," he kidded. "I usually eat first."

"Actually_, I_ should go…" Amy stepped timidly forwards and looked meekly at both men. "The guards aren't looking for me. I have a pass for every area. They'd be less suspicious…"

"But you can't disarm them, or make the adjustments to the dish's operating system," Martha pointed out. _And you're way too skittish to pull off a good scam…_

"I…I can distract them. Give you a better chance."

Jack cocked his head. "I hate to say it, but she's right. While they're talkin' to Amy they're less likely to notice us until we're on top of them."

Martha was about to protest, and she suspected so was the Doctor, but Amy wasn't sticking around to wait while they decided. Maybe she thought she could repay them for her earlier doubts and fears, or maybe she had something to prove to herself.

Either way, the jumpy little nurse stepped out into the passageway and began to walk towards the guards' station, her palms sticky with sweat.

From their position, the Doctor, Jack and Martha had no way of seeing if her subterfuge was working, or if she was about to get mowed down in a hail of bullets.

Seconds ticked by, and Jack was unusually silent, his cocky manner dulled by the fact he was letting a woman do his dirty work – a woman he actually cared for.

Martha could see the wrinkles of annoyance forming on his features as he was forced to stand helplessly by. She looked over to the Doctor, and he too wore the same dour expression.

He wanted to bound out and bombard the soldiers on duty with his madcap persona and psychic paper, not send a terrified young woman instead.

The problem was, the men on duty were likely to be edgy, if not downright paranoid. They could even be on the verge of 'turning'.

Maybe a friendly and familiar face stood more chance with them than a have-a-go hero and a manic Time Lord.

Martha squirmed. _Maybe I should I have gone with her…_

Voices broke the unearthly quiet of the complex and the trio became perfectly still as they listened to every word.

The MPs were quizzing Amy, demanding to know why they hadn't been warned of her impending presence.

Surprisingly, Amy didn't collapse under interrogation – in fact, she seemed to grow angry, almost daring them to question her authority.

Jack's face cracked into a toothy grin. "Now _that_," he said to Martha, "that is the Amy I fell in love with."

"And I thought you only loved _you,_" the Doctor mouthed under his breath before popping his head around the wall to carefully peer down the passageway. "C'mon!" He whispered just a touch too loudly. "The game is afoot! Or maybe we should still go with the charge…I love a good charge…"

Jack shook his head but barrelled after the Time Lord, with Martha bringing up the rear.

It was a brave approach, considering their footfalls echoed hard off the polished tile floor, but it was their _only_ approach and they had to take the control room quickly.

The Doctor had made it just past the halfway mark when the first guard heard them storming his position. He was a chubby little fellow for an airman, his features plumped with excess fat until he resembled a pug.

The fact that he was bulky and short, however, did little to hamper his reflexes. He swung the M16's strap off his shoulder and had the rifle aimed within seconds.

If he had any compunction about pulling the trigger, he didn't show it.

A stream of bullets strafed past the Doctor with only inches to spare, the spent rounds embedding themselves deeply into the facility's walls like ticks in flesh.

"_Whoops!_" the Doctor bellowed, diving for cover behind a large cheese plant that obviously provided no protection. "I think somebody got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning…"

Jack just managed to duck a second volley and then rolled to the floor, letting off several rounds of his own – not at the aggravated airman, but at the overhead lights that dangled above the man's head.

The fluorescent tubing hissed and shattered with the spray of bullets, fragments of jagged glass showering the soldier until he couldn't help but stop his own barrage to dodge clear of the falling debris.

As he flinched and skittered sideways, the Doctor leapt from behind the cheese plant, screwdriver firmly pointed at something behind the checkpoint. The sonic's bulbous tip shimmered as it worked its unseen magic, and suddenly the corridor was filling with a thick, caustic-smelling smog.

Something in the radar control room fizzed, and sparks began to spit from a secondary bank of mainframes as they too spewed out more of the burnt electronics-induced miasma.

The fat little airman began to hack so hard he couldn't hold his weapon steady and he eventually tossed the M16 down and held his shaking hands firmly up in the air.

The second soldier looked over at his friend uncertainly, then to Amy who still stood by the checkpoint, her back against the wall in apparent fear.

He seemed to take a second to evaluate his choices, as he too began to cough.

"Give it up and we all get to live." Jack let the barrel of his automatic slide through the air until it was lined up with the MP's skull. If he were to pull the trigger, his slug would make a clean entry right between the young man's eyes and probably exit into whatever lay beyond the fog bank he was now standing in.

The soldier's throat bobbed and he let the service issue pistol in his hand slip through his fingers to the floor. It clattered on the tiles, but was hidden by the swirling mist at their feet.

"Nice job of controlling the weather," Jack snarked at the Doctor as he started to manacle the two soldiers together with their own cuffs. "Think you could whip up a nice breeze and clear this stuff before we _all _start to choke?"

Martha appeared at the Time Lord's side, obviously in defensive mode. "At least he found a way in without shooting anyone," she pointed out.

"That's right! A little smoke and mirrors never hurt anyone…" The Doctor adjusted a setting on the sonic and walked through the checkpoint. "'Course, old Houdini might argue that point…" He switched the sonic back on, and miraculously the smoke began to clear. "_Bellissimo_!"

Jack was less than thrilled. He took another short glance at his watch and pointed for Amy and Martha to follow the Doctor into the radar control room.

Inside, it was much the same as the rest of Montauk – strangely empty.

A whole row of seats lay bare, the monitors and keypads in front of them beeping and flashing as if they'd been left 'home alone' and weren't very happy about the fact.

It looked like a dated movie set to Martha, but it was frighteningly real.

"So has everyone turned into those things or what? And where are they?" She glanced around, the frown on her face growing as she realized something was very, _very_ wrong – even by their standards.

"Oh don't worry, sweetheart," Jack warned. "I'm sure they're waiting to have a little fun with us if our resident geek doesn't hurry it up." He shot the Doctor a glance, but the Time Lord was already busy at one of the consoles.

"Well look at_ that_…someone's dead locked the dish's security system programs…very _very_ sneaky…_oooh_…." The Doctor poked the sonic into an access port anyway and wasn't a bit surprised when a small shower of sparks erupted over his hand and forearm.

"Wha…what does that mean?" Amy stammered, watching the Doctor as he tapped several keys on one of the workstations.

"Dead locked means even the Doctor's sonic screwdriver can't break through the encryption," Martha explained, folding her arms with a look of exasperation. "Which means…"

"Which means you've had a wasted journey…"

Everyone turned, even the Doctor, although he continued to fiddle with the radar controls.

_Fiddling while Rome burns_, Martha concluded mentally as she whirled to look straight into Tesla's piercing eyes.

"Oh _wonderful!_" The Doctor's face grew into one of his huge smiles, even though Martha was sure he felt anything but happy. _"Finally_ get to meet the man I've heard so much about…must be a right old buzz for you to be the second smartest man in the room, eh?"

Tesla returned the smile, keeping his hands behind his back in an almost military stance. "Such witty words…but then, it must hurt to know you've failed, Doctor…?" The scientist held out a hand, and at first Martha and the others didn't grasp why.

Then, with a mocking smile of her own, Amy sashayed across the room and took her place at the side of Tesla and his entourage of guards.

Finally, Martha understood what Amy's strange behaviour back in the infirmary had been all about, and the realization made her more than angry. She could feel the rage burning in the pit of her stomach until nothing but retribution would douse its flames.

She'd been duped by the best – no, they _all_ had, even the Doctor.

"She's a _bloody_ traitor," Martha mouthed, the disbelief in her voice making her sound hoarse.

Tesla noted her expression and nodded, playful mirth crossing his features as he enjoyed the victory. His eyes darted to the Doctor's and he savoured the look of defeat there. "You're not the _only_ Time Lord to travel with a companion," he enlightened. "Mine just happens to be considerably smarter than your…current list of associates…"

Jack pulled his automatic into view and aimed straight for Tesla's temple. "You know, I hate being called names…"

As his sights zeroed in on their target, the MPs at Tesla's side returned the compliment – and they had no intention of waiting on orders before they fired.

"Jack no!" Martha and the Doctor screamed the same shrill warning in unison.

Jack Harkness couldn't die here, there were things he had to do in the future. Torchwood needed a leader, Rifts needed monitoring, lives in Cardiff Bay and beyond needed saving every day when the Doctor couldn't be there.

And yet, the sting in the tail was just waiting to happen.

Because _this_ Jack Harkness _could_ die here.

And if he did, then the future timeline they knew would die with him…

_To be continued..._


	5. Chapter 5

_Chapter Five_

Martha heard the discharge from the first airman's weapon and flinched, expecting her face to be sprayed with a thin spatter of blood. At this close range, there would be nothing left of her friend's skull, let alone his face.

She blinked when no garish deluge of flesh came, realizing that somehow Jack Harkness was still standing and in one piece.

It took her surprised brain cells a few seconds to process the picture before her, and then she finally grasped what had happened.

For some unknown reason, Tesla had knocked the soldier's M16 sideways as the MP had pulled the trigger. The move would have taken insanely fast reflexes she wouldn't have expected from a man his age. But then, as a Time Lord, he could well be far older than he appeared and still have far quicker reaction times than a human.

Jack didn't move, keeping his automatic trained on Tesla's forehead, but his breathing had quickened considerably. "Jeez, I guess you like me after all, huh?" He snarked, his wary eyes never leaving the newly discovered Gallifreyan.

"On the contrary," Tesla exhaled. "I simply have a better use for you…"

"Why here? Why now? Just _who_ are you…?" The Doctor pushed past Jack and stood in front of Tesla, arms folded as if he expected the man to answer and obey him.

Tesla sniffed, apparently deciding whether he could be bothered to respond. He turned his back on the group, his head ticking towards the MPs at his side. Neither seemed to dare move after his recent physical rebuke, and he appeared satisfied with their obedience.

"Who am I?" Tesla finally intoned. "I am the Time Lord you should have been…you and those feeble-minded fools who ran Gallifrey in _your _world…"

"_In_ my world?" The Doctor's brow knitted in concentration and Martha could have sworn she could actually see the cogs of his highly intelligent mind spinning into overdrive. After a moment, he ran a hand through the front of his hair, his eyes bulging. "Of course! It all makes perfect sense! You're from a _parallel _universe! But how…the void should be sealed…not even Rose can get back again…"

Tesla's wry smile faded and he actually looked angry. "There are _always_ gaps. Tiny holes that a wandering soul in the time vortex can inadvertently fall through."

"Like when you, Rose and Mickey ended up with the Cybermen, in that steel world, yeah?" Martha suggested, remembering the stories the Doctor had told her of his earlier adventures.

"Except I didn't try to destroy that world to get home," the Doctor pointed out, an edge of irritation creeping into his voice. "All of this." He spun around, gesturing to the building's walls and beyond. "All of this _mess_, just so you can try and get back across the void?"

Tesla's smile returned. "Ah, but home is so much more real for me, Doctor. In my world, Gallifrey still exists. And one day soon, I shall rule it. Time Lords like you have no place there. There are those that looked into the heart of the Untempered Schism and embraced it, and then there are those who ran away…"

The Doctor cocked his head, scratching absently at his ear. "_Well_…I didn't run _exactly_, I like to think of it as more of a slow jog…or maybe a quick saunter…"

"In my world, only the strong survive. Your kind have been…_removed_…"

"Including me?" the Doctor quizzed, his mind still working furiously with the information he was being given. "I mean, the version of me from your universe?"

Tesla's smile grew into an even wider grin and he took down a breath as if the air he was breathing was some kind of ambrosia. "I took it upon myself to find and destroy the weakness poisoning my society. You ran from the gap in reality, and for that I killed you, and those like you."

The Doctor made a 'tutting' sound with his tongue and circled Tesla like he was dancing around the TARDIS's main console. "_Ooh,_ but now you're stuck here, with another, obviously _smarter_ version of me…funny old thing destiny, isn't it?"

"Destiny?" Tesla muttered dryly, as if he didn't believe in such a word. "I will simply have the pleasure of killing you twice, along with this world you love so much…"

"Okay, okay, can we just back up?" Jack's eyes darted from the Doctor, to Tesla, to Amy and back again. If he'd been confused before, he'd totally lost track of what was going on now. Finally letting the gun in his hand drop to his side, he wiped his brow with the back of his free sleeve. "Can we go back to the abridged version again?"

The Doctor nodded and Martha realized he was going to give one of his lengthy, speculative diatribes. "Let's see," he began. "The real Nikola Tesla was born back in 1856…I'm guessing that at some point around then, you fell through the gap in the void and decided to take his place." He looked up expectantly at the unnamed Time Lord. "Man of science, prominent figure…his guise was bound to become useful if you wanted to get home…"

"So you_ killed_ the real Tesla?" Martha asked, her face showing her disgust.

"He was surplus to my requirements, yes." Tesla didn't seem to realize murder was actually a crime in this dimension, or if he did, it was of little significance to him.

"So you killed the real geek, and have been using his credentials ever since to access the kinds of technologies that could get you home?" Jack nodded, finally understanding. "You found the Rift, decided to give it a little turbo boost, and then when I showed up and provided the vortex manipulator…"

"My needs were answered," Tesla acknowledged. "Of course, there's going to be collateral damage, but I will be long gone in…" he glanced at the glistening Rolex on his wrist, "oh, in the next ten minutes or so."

"You're using the Rift, or Schism or whatever you call it to get you back to another parallel world, and you don't care how many other worlds you destroy to do it? I thought Time Lords were supposed to protect the universe, not fry it!" Martha stepped up to Tesla and let her eyes burn into his.

He seemed to enjoy the confrontation, his own gaze never waning. "Like I said," he hissed through gritted teeth. "In my world, Gallifrey still exists. To rule it is to rule everything…"

Martha actually wanted to slap him – no, slap some _sense_ into him. For someone so clever, he'd obviously overlooked the fact that his 'Rift' could easily tear _his _world apart too. The Doctor had said that earlier, and if she trusted anyone, she trusted him.

"So what now?" Jack stepped between Martha and Tesla, his actions suggesting he'd guessed what she was thinking. "You just take a dive through the Rift and hope you land back home? 'Cause, buddy, I gotta tell you, that's just plain nuts!" He gave the Doctor a quick glance. "Even more nuts than him…"

Tesla nodded. "Fools often mistake pure genius for insanity. But don't worry, everything is worked out to the last detail. When I ride the Schism, there won't be anything random about it…let's just say I have the perfect guidance system…"

"Oh _really_?" The Doctor's brow quirked up and he appeared genuinely surprised such a thing was possible. "Now where would you get such a sophisticated piece of technology, then? Nothing that complex on Earth at least…"

Tesla's hawk-like orbs glistened, but he refused to be drawn into giving an answer. "I'd love to stand and chat about the intricacies of time travel further, but I really do have a ride booked, and I'd hate to be late." He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again his mouth quirked sarcastically at the edges. "Don't worry…I'll leave you all with a little light entertainment. Wouldn't want you to get bored…"

Jack raised his automatic again and the guards spun to confront him.

Tesla ignored their retaliatory move and stood fast, smiling down the barrel of the weapon. "Jack, my boy, you really shouldn't risk your life so. You're not immortal yet…"

The Time Agent stiffened, his grasp on the gun faltering just enough for Tesla to grab it from him with the same lightning moves he'd used to knock away the M16.

"_Spoilers_!" The Doctor groaned. "First you come along and start tinkering with the Rift, and now you're giving out _spoilers_! Oh we can't have this…"

Jack looked at the Doctor and his brow furrowed just enough to show his confusion. "Immortal?" His eyes moved back to Tesla. "What do you mean by _immortal_?"

Tesla simply shrugged. "Within the next few minutes, it really won't matter anymore anyway." He slid his hands into his pockets and then nodded to the two MPs. "And now I really must be leaving. My associates here will take you to your…" He rubbed a hand across his mouth as if thinking. "To see _some old friends…"_

Without saying more, Tesla moved swiftly to the control room door and vanished down a never-ending corridor.

The Doctor clasped his hands together and smiled at the two airmen who'd been left to shepherd them. "Right then! Where we off to now? Spot of afternoon tea? Oh no…we're in America…no Earl Grey and crumpets…"

"I'm thinking you're more likely to get a taste of gun oil and lead," Jack offered as the first soldier prodded him with the butt of his rifle, ushering the Time Agent and his companions into a second corridor.

"_Lead? _Nah, can't say as that's very tasty, although the Scree of Molkor Five seem to thrive on it…'course they'd take a bite of anything when they're hungry. Bit like a swarm of Vashta Narada I once knew…"

"Does he ever shut up?" Jack looked at Martha and she shook her head apologetically.

"Only when he's asleep…and sometimes he talks in that too."

Jack grinned crudely. "Oh _yeah?_"

"Oi! It's not _like that!_ Don't you ever think of anything else?" Martha saw one of their guards throw her a look that said he didn't believe her either. She brushed off the insinuation and carried on walking.

"Me, think of anything else?" Jack thought about it. "Not very often," he admitted. "I'm all for the sex, guns and the odd vortex manipulator."

"Not that he knows how to use one," the Doctor chimed in. "Time agents," he grumbled. "Wouldn't know a time stream if it jumped up and threw them into another dimension!"

"Look who's talking!" Jack retorted as the first MP took a key from his pocket and opened up a large blast door to their right. "You're a _Time Lord_ and look what a fine mess you got us into!"

"He sounds like _Oliver Hardy_!" The Doctor brushed away Jack's jibe with a counter insult and then was forced forwards by the guards into a large rectangular room.

"Yeah, well that must make you Stan Laurel…and then some," Martha sighed, following the Doctor inside the huge chamber with Jack bringing up the rear.

She looked around, arms folded, checking out the bland metal walls that appeared to be their new prison. "Lot of room for just three detainees?" She addressed both soldiers.

The second man smirked at her, his face creasing until he looked like a wizened pug. "Don't worry, it will soon fill up…" Not giving any further explanation, he and the other MP turned tail, sealing the blast door closed behind them.

"Jeez, they're a cryptic bunch, huh?" Jack pondered, quickly scanning the walls for a way of escape. After a couple of seconds, he paused, but not because he'd found a way out. "So, are you gonna tell me what that freaky relative of yours meant by 'immortal'?"

The Doctor began examining an electronic port that may or may not have been some kind of interior mechanism for the blast door. He didn't look up as he responded. "We're really, really_, really_ not related, you know. He's far too pompous…and I _soooo _can't tell you about the immortal bit. _Well…_I could, but then that would be me compounding the damage to future timelines by increasing the size of the actual paradox which…"

"Will you just _tell _me?" Jack raised his voice enough to startle Martha and she watched as the Doctor finally stopped tinkering and looked the Time Agent in the eye.

She instantly recognized the face.

The Doctor was sad, not because the world was going to end in the next few minutes if they didn't stop it, but because Jack shouldn't have to face his own indestructibility just yet.

"I really can't die?" Jack pushed again, and this time the Doctor finally answered.

"You can die here and now, but in the future something happens…something I should have stopped…"

Jack frowned. "You make it sound like living forever is a bad thing. C'mon, think of all the _fun_ I can have."

"Watching friends, people you care about wither and die, and you live on…it's not fun, believe me…" The Doctor spoke as if the sorrow was his own, and Martha knew that he was talking from experience.

Being a Time Lord was an interminable, lonely existence. And soon, Jack would learn what it was like first hand.

Martha stepped between the two men, arms folded. "We should escape first, talk later. Can you open the door?" She cocked one brow at the Doctor and he beamed back.

"Oh _yessssss!_ Just need to find the right frequencies on the old sonic and…"

From behind them there was a hydraulic murmur followed by a metallic grumble. All three turned to see a second blast door opening. The huge sheet of metal retracted fully into the sidewall until the chamber became twice its original size.

And beyond the second door stood another wall – a shouting, rabid barrier of human bodies that had once been a group of sentient beings.

Now, the creatures were reduced to flesh-craving monsters.

Monsters that needed to kill and feed.

"You know, I _really_ wouldn't call them old friends…" The Doctor grimaced and then whirled back around, frantically waving the sonic screwdriver at the access port. The console beeped and chirped as he bombarded it with different electrical impulses, but it refused to budge.

Martha took a step backwards until her spine met with the resistance of the metal tomb they'd been deposited in. She ignored the coolness of the steel along her backbone, instead watching as the 'zombies' began to slowly move towards them.

The ringleader appeared to be a small woman – definitely an office worker of some sort. She was in uniform, but all of her military training was gone now, replaced by some primal urge to feed.

The brunette's eyes whirled and she seemed to latch onto Martha as her target. The coldness of her eyes and the deathly pale pallor of her features were too much for the young doctor to bear, and Martha dragged her gaze away, focusing back on the Doctor.

"How much longer?" she snapped, unable to hide the irritation and fear in her voice.

"She has a point, Brains, we have no weapons, and I don't fancy going hand to hand with a mob that size…" Jack frowned as the Time Lord seemed to ignore him.

"Oh, I don't plan on fighting! Never was very good at fisticuffs and all that…not too sure I can get the door open just yet either…the security coding in this section is just _brilliant!_! Definitely Time Lord technology!"

Martha couldn't help but raise her voice, even if she knew the Doctor hadn't actually given in. "But you said you could open the door!"

"Well…I never said _when_…"

Jack looked over his shoulder and realized the crowd had moved forwards. They weren't exactly charging, in fact, it was more like the gait of the walking dead, but they'd still be chowing on human flesh within the minute if something didn't happen.

"_Doctor_!"

Something fizzed inside the console the Doctor was working on, and a thin plume of blue smoke rose out of the access hole. As the smoke ebbed away, something inside began to spark in unison with the blue tip of the Time Lord's sonic screwdriver.

Behind them, one by one, the human 'zombies' began to drop.

Martha heard the first body slap into the concrete floor and she whirled, confused by the sudden turnabout of events.

As she watched, eyes wide open, more of their enemy collapsed until not one was left standing. She took a tentative step forwards, edging towards the uniformed brunette, who now lay on her side, gurgling like a small baby.

The woman looked so harmless now – no, more than that – _helpless._

Martha wished there was something she could do. She had wanted to be a doctor so that she could help people, save people, and at times like this it pained her not to be able to do anything.

Something moved at her side, and she looked up to see Jack hovering over her and the dying woman. For the first time, she saw sympathy in his normally wicked gaze.

"Doc says we need to hurry. He doesn't know how long his override of the dish controls will hold from here."

Martha nodded glumly and rose back to her feet. They couldn't do anything here, but maybe they could stop the rest of the world turning into mulch. She hurried back over to the Doctor with Jack in tow.

"You hotwired the radar dish from here then?"

The Doctor shrugged, still meddling in the wall with his sonic. "I disabled the deadlocks while I was talking to Tesla back in the radar control room…Sleight of hand, just like David Copperfield! 'Course I still had to relay the management system to this console and redirect the feeds so we were transmitting, not receiving…"

Jack waved his hand with a grimace. "I think we get the picture…kinda. Now can we please get this damn door open?"

The Doctor grinned and tapped a new setting into the sonic. As the tip flashed, the huge blast door slid back and they were free. "Chop chop!" He bounced through the gap and then ushered his two friends out with a rapid wave of his hand. "C'mon then! We've got two generators to disable!"

Jack and Martha obeyed, watching in amazement as the blast door slipped back into place, sealing off all the affected 'zombies'.

"Okay, so that was just weird."

"No time to worry about weird!" The Doctor skipped backwards to a junction in the maze of corridors. "You need to take Martha and shut down the station's auxiliary generator while I deal with the one in the Rift room!"

"You mean I actually get the girl?" Jack looked impressed. "Okay, so gimme a gun and I'll die happy…" He looked up, momentarily caught out by his own words. "While _I can_ still die, that is…"

When the Doctor didn't reply, he shrugged and began to jog off down the corridor towards his target. They had little time for words, after all.

"Oi!" Martha, however, wasn't going to just accept the plan at face value. The Doctor wanted to go it alone, and that worried her. The greater the risk, the more he'd want her out of the danger. Except her mind didn't work that way. "Why do I get stuck with He-Man?" She put her hands on her hips, emphasizing the words.

The Time Lord sighed as if he knew this confrontation was inevitable. The false smile on his face waned and he pinched the brow of his nose.

For the first time, Martha realized the Doctor looked tired – or was it more _defeated_?

"You can't go near the Schism, you know that," he didn't look her in the eye as he spoke. "The energy it's creating would tear a human apart cell by cell. You saw what those people were reduced to, and they weren't exposed to the core of the spatial tear…"

"And what about you?"

Again the hesitation, the deferred glance. The Doctor didn't lie per se, but he was very good at obfuscation.

"I'll be fine." The cheesy smile returned, but Martha knew it was for her sake. "I'm a Time Lord remember? Played with roentgen bricks as a kid, got struck by lightning on the Empire State Building … a little old hole in time and space is all in a day's work!"

"Except it isn't, is it?" Martha glanced after Harkness, but didn't attempt to follow him. Not yet. "What will the Rift do to you? I mean _really_ do to you?"

The Doctor began to pace. "It won't do anything," he said in an almost irritated tone. "At least, not if I get out quick enough. And you know I'm fast on my feet."

He looked up at Martha and she knew the expression well enough to know he wasn't going to back down.

"You don't need to worry about me. You need to worry about Jack. I need you to make sure nothing happens to him," he continued, his words getting faster. "He's still young, headstrong…can't have him getting killed here or…"

"And what if you get killed here?" Martha countered. "Don't tell me it isn't possible, you're not immortal either!"

"Can't die here, we still have to go to Gettysburg!" The Doctor grinned, and Martha knew any kind of bargaining time she'd had was gone. "Go look after Jack. And if the Rift doesn't close, get back to the TARDIS." He pulled a disc from his pocket. "Emergency override protocols," he explained. "Jack should be able to get you to another timeline with this. Maybe far enough away from the ripple effect…"

"We're not leaving you!"

The Time Lord's face grew cold. "Yes you are, Martha Jones, because if the Rift doesn't close…if I haven't sealed it by the time you've shut down the secondary generator…it means…" He turned away then and began to jog down the opposite corridor to the one Jack had taken. "Oh…you know what it means…"

Martha's eyes began to fill up, but she bit back the tears as the familiar overcoat and its owner disappeared into the bowels of Montauk.

"You can't die here," she whispered, brushing moisture from her cheek as she set off after Jack. "You just can't…"

* * *

The Doctor winced as his All Stars skidded along the floor, squeaking as the rubber dragged across the tiles too quickly. But it wasn't just the excess noise making him scowl.

Martha _knew._

As sure as he knew every star in the Universe, Martha Jones knew he was attempting something even his body might not withstand.

Would she try to follow? In honesty, knowing Martha it was a distinct possibility once her own task had been completed.

And he couldn't allow that to happen. He couldn't let Martha and Jack Harkness come back here to their doom.

The Doctor quickened his pace further, until when he took the final corner he almost tripped over the abundance of bodies littering the walkway.

He stumbled, catching the wall with his left arm to narrowly escape losing his balance.

"I'm so sorry," he mumbled, sorrow-filled eyes falling onto the sea of corpses.

These were the people he had disabled with the radar dish. But these bodies were far from intact. They had been too close to project room doors when they had fallen.

Too close to the every expanding Rift/Schism energy.

Even if he hadn't rendered them unconscious, they wouldn't have escaped its effects, but somehow, that didn't make the Time Lord feel any better as he scanned the mass of tangled, warped limbs.

It was like looking upon a badly assembled jigsaw puzzle where pieces had been forced together that were never meant to mate with one another. Cells had been destroyed, some restructured until Wes Craven would have been proud of the results.

The Doctor was glad Martha wasn't here to see this. Glad that she wasn't being affected in a similar way, even if at some level he already was.

He stepped over what may once have been a young soldier, although only the cloth of his uniform now gave his species away. As he skipped over a second cadaver, his foot caught on something thin and translucent, and he paused, kneeling to inspect it.

The obstruction was a cable that snaked across the corridor, and for the most part had been hidden by the throng of bodies. The Doctor slid on his glasses, inspecting the pulsing wire with a curious squint. "_Ooh_…now what have we here then…?"

He slid a hand under the cable, following it like a buddy line. One end appeared to feed into the project room, but the other led off into the adjacent passageway. "Definitely some kind of information conduit…like a super fast, super efficient fibre optic connection with …"

The Doctor edged around the corner and stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth opening in both shock and uncertainty. Of all the things he had expected Tesla to be using as a guidance system, this wasn't one of them.

"What…_what…WHAT!!_"

The TARDIS sat squarely in the middle of the corridor, its door open to allow the cable connection to its time vortex guidance systems. The light on the top throbbed dully with each pulse of information it sent out.

The Doctor's mouth opened and closed like a goldfish and he backed up, wide eyes examining the blue police box.

At first glance, he'd thought this was _his_ ship, taken from Montauk's grounds and hotwired into Tesla's systems, but upon closer scrutiny he realized it was something much more.

His TARDIS was the type 40 – a model long obsolete even before he'd acquired it. While this specimen was still ancient by human standards, it was of a newer design. A few circuits here, an improved and yet still fatally flawed chameleon circuit there…

The Doctor stopped his appraisal, remembering that his first priority was to stop Tesla. And to stop his enemy, he needed to cut the feed from the ship's centre console.

Warily stepping inside, the Time Lord felt a familiar tingle.

It was like stepping home, into _his _TARDIS.

He closed his eyes, feeling the hum of the ship pulsate through every cell in his body. He was one with the biological machine, perfectly tuned to its systems. He could sense it, feel it – he was _part _of it.

The Doctor's eyes snapped back open and he ran a hand over the keypad controls.

This wasn't Tesla's ship from another dimension, this was_ his_ ship from another dimension. Tesla had admitted to killing 'The Doctor' in his parallel world, and when he had done so, he had stolen this TARDIS.

The ship seemed to sense the Time Lord's deductions and the thrumming from its systems grew in intensity. It was prisoner to a mad man, and the Doctor would set it free.

Patting the console, he moved to where the cable fed into the heart of the machine. Once disconnected, Tesla would have no control over where the Rift took him – if he hadn't already departed.

The Doctor pulled out his sonic and began to alter its settings until it thrummed in time with the TARDIS. Pointing it at the live feed, he closed his eyes, took a breath, and then flicked the screwdriver's 'on' button.

The cable ceased to flash, its outer core turning to a plain grey as the data feed stopped.

He patted the side of the console affectionately and yanked away the cable like he was pulling a thorn from an innocent child. "It's all over now, girl…"

The pained hum from the TARDIS died and the Doctor sighed. It was time to enter the project room and face Tesla if he was still in this world. While the Rift was no longer controllable, it still needed closing or else…

Rising from beneath the console, the Doctor headed for the door at a quick jog, stopping only when he reached one of the outer support joists. He couldn't leave this injured TARDIS here. If the Rift's effects were to kill him when he chased after Tesla, then its technology would fall into hands that were not ready for such wonders – even in this state of disrepair.

He whirled around, sprinting like a greyhound back to the keypad and screen. Quickly bringing up the ship's systems, he realized that Tesla had crashed through the void, damaging several of the TARDIS's circuits. While Tesla could easily have breathed life back into the power cells as the Doctor had in the 'steel world', the one thing Tesla didn't have here was the technology to replace the fused circuits.

"Simple little chrono chips…and it stopped you flying home…"

Sifting through his left jacket pocket, the Doctor pulled out two lollipops, a Band Aid, and a bottle opener. Not quite what he'd been looking for.

Trying again, he rummaged in the right pocket, bringing out the psychic paper, a Harry Potter hardback, and finally, finally a strange alien device that looked like it belonged in the 51st century, and probably did.

"Molto Bene!"

The Doctor's grin widened and he began taking the item apart like it was a piece of Lego. At its centre, he found the two circuits he was looking for and swiftly pulled them free. He examined the bio-boards for compatibility and then jammed them into a section of the console that looked like it had been made out of egg cartons.

The TARDIS's rotor vibrated appreciatively, and the usual green glow began to seep back into the static column.

"_Right!_ Time to send you home…or err…well, not quite _home_, but to someone who knows how to look after you. At least, I hope he knows how to look after you…never did really have much time for chit chat…not with all that snogging going on…"

The Doctor began to frantically type in co-ordinates and set the TARDIS to automatically gravitate to them without a pilot. Giving the bicycle pump a good few squeezes, he released the handbrake and darted for the door.

As he jumped clear, the TARDIS began to wheeze and cough until its frame started to turn translucent. In another two seconds, she was gone – a ghost, lost to another world, another dimension.

The Doctor took a breath. He had sent the ship to someone who could protect it, someone who would use it.

Someone who was _part_ of it.

"Right then! Let's go plug a hole!" Stuffing his hands in his overcoat pockets, he sighed and walked towards the Rift room doors. The effects were getting too strong here, even for his kind.

He could feel the pull at every cell in his body.

Was Tesla feeling it?

The Doctor reached out to activate the door controls and then stopped. To his left, hanging from a section of hooks on the wall, were several red outfits that reminded him of antigrav space suits.

Had Tesla found a way to partially shield himself from the Rift energy?

Scooting over, the Doctor ran his sonic over the material. It was denser than it looked or felt, and touching the rough surface of the cloth made his fingertips tingle. He shrugged and plucked down the suit that most reasonably matched his size.

"In for a penny, in for a pound….or should that be out of the frying pan and into a great big pan of…_Oooh_, I've been around Jack too long…" He zipped the front closed and slid on the helmet.

Visibility wasn't great, but if the cumbersome guise bought him time…

Time, something he'd run out of the moment he'd come within two hundred yards of the project room.

He thought of Jack, and of Martha, and of all the friends he had known in this incarnation and he closed his eyes, sending them a silent message he knew they would never hear.

_If we meet again we'll smile indeed; If not, __'tis true this parting was well made…_

Taking a breath, he let a gloved hand open the project room door and he stepped inside, facing the raw, noxious energy of the pulsing maelstrom…

_To Be Continued..._


	6. Chapter 6

_Chapter Six_

Jack barged through the open door to the armoury and stopped dead. What had he been thinking? Yeah, he needed a weapon, maybe explosives, but shouldn't he have expected this place to be heavily guarded?

The problem was, ever since he'd met this strange 'Doctor' and his pretty sidekick, he hadn't been thinking straight. Heck, he hadn't been thinking at all. He was a Time Agent, he should know better.

And yet, somehow, dashing around Montauk without the faintest idea of a plan seemed to be working.

The armoury door was wide open, and not a soul was on sentry duty. Maybe the MPs had better things to do, either for Tesla, or because the facility had been overrun by its own crazed staff.

Whatever the reason, Jack Harkness wasn't stupid enough not to take advantage of it.

Closing the security door behind him, he jumped over the sign-in desk and skittered into the main weapons storage area. His boyish smile turned into a large grin as he surveyed what was on offer.

Of course, he'd been in here before, but the sight of his favourites all lined up and awaiting his touch always made his stomach churn with excitement. The 'Doctor' may hate a good old Smith and Wesson or Browning, but Jack couldn't help but get a warm fuzzy feeling the moment the cold steel hit the palm of his hands.

He stuffed a US Airforce-issue automatic into his waistband and took a second to weigh up the advantages of an M16 against the single handgun. He shrugged to himself, deciding he could move more adroitly without the cumbersome rifle.

Grabbing a box of shells for the .45, he paused at the explosives locker. Until now, he hadn't really thought about how he was going to disable the generator. It wasn't as if he actually knew a whole lot about ancient power devices like that. He was great with 51st century tech, but something so primitive it probably still ran on gasoline? Not so much.

Jack licked his lips and tried his old access code on the bulky keypad lock. It chirped, and surprisingly turned green after a short pause. Evidently, Tesla was so cocky he hadn't rescinded the Time Agent's security clearance.

"Always knew I was just too good to say no to…" Jack's eyes sparkled with mirth as he selected two square chunks of C4 and what he assumed were the relevant detonators. This was going to be messy, but quick. "Just what the Doctor ordered," he muttered, slamming the locker closed once more.

"Jack?"

He looked up to find Martha staring at him as if he'd gone AWOL from a mission. She looked angry, and he decided he liked her all the more that way. It was no fun when the gal, guy, or _whatever_, didn't play hard to get. "What?" He finally responded. "Don't tell me you're with the Peace Corps too?"

"I thought we'd agreed no guns…?"

"No," he sighed, edging back through the door and into the corridor. "I think I may have agreed not to shoot anyone; I never said no guns."

Martha followed, realizing they were passing the infirmary again. _We're going in circles!_ "Isn't that the same thing?" she prodded.

"Hardly." Jack tugged the automatic out and filled the clip with shells. "Listen, maybe you should wait here. Just because there were no guards at the armoury…"

"No way! First the Doctor, now you! I'm coming with you, we're going to finish this, yeah? And then we go right back and find the Doctor!"

Jack frowned, flipping the safety off the .45. Women, he decided, were sometimes more trouble than they were worth. "No need to get tetchy," he offered. "I can take a hint." He nodded to an exterior door that seemed to lead into an outer courtyard. "Generator room is across there…we can take it out with the C4…if there are no guards…"

Martha edged forwards, peering at the concrete building that looked like some kind of blast shelter. "If there's one thing I've learned travelling with the Doctor, it's that 'if' is a very big word…"

Jack held the automatic up to his chest, pointing the barrel skywards as he dodged from the cover of the corridor to dart up to the door. "Strikes me your buddy likes big words."

"Smartest man I know, and then some," Martha admitted as she joined Jack, electing to use the opposite side of the doorframe for a limited amount of cover.

Jack took a breath, deciding on whether to just go for a full frontal assault or try something a little more stealthy. "So tell me something, Martha: if you know him so well, if he's so…'brain of the universe', how do I end up stuck living forever? _Why_…?"

"It's not his fault…"

Jack nodded, but the sarcastic look on his face said it all. "It's never _anyone's_ fault. That's the problem," he muttered, stepping away from the doorframe and out into the open.

He exhaled, hearing Martha's footsteps behind him. _Why the hell couldn't she just bring a gun?_ Even if she had no intention of using one, it would have made him feel better.

"I don't see any guards…" Martha levelled with Jack, her high boot heels clomping across the concrete enclosure like the ominous knocking at a secluded mansion's door.

Jack held out a hand in front of her, stopping her getting any closer to the generator room. He didn't like this.

Something was off.

"Just let the tough guy go first for once, huh?" He cocked a brow and then took Martha's forearm, guiding her to his right until they were behind a small wall. It had originally been built as nothing more than shielding from the elements, but right now, Jack would take it as a different kind of protection. "It's too quiet," he noted, ducking his head up to take another peek at their target.

No sooner had he bobbed into plain view than a volley of bullets skittered across the brickwork near his temple, some gouging into the wall, some glancing off the edge and missing the Time Agent by millimetres.

"Ouch…" Jack dropped back down next to Martha. "I'm _so_ offended. Trying to kill me and they don't even know me yet…" He smirked and then cut sideways, firing off three rounds at their unknown assailant. "Bet he wouldn't be shooting at me if he knew how cute I am in a uniform…"

Martha ignored the self-adoration and focused on the generator room. "Is there another way in?"

"Not unless you plan on tunnelling over there. No Transmats in this century, sweetheart." Jack popped up again, trying to judge the distance between the wall and the generator room door without getting his head blown off.

It wouldn't take much of a sprint to get to their target, but short of their foe running out of clips, he couldn't see how to get in without someone being killed – namely Jack, if he was dumb enough to make an assault.

"Couldn't you use a lump of that explosive to cause a distraction?" Martha suggested. "Draw them out or maybe get them to surrender?"

Jack pulled a cube of C4 from his pocket and thought about it. Using a detonator stick he could probably make it work, but just how much of the stuff was too much? He could toss the lot in the doorway and take out the generator and the bad guys in one fell swoop, but somehow he thought Martha might not go for that kind of plan.

"You want me to judge just the right amount to freak them, not kill them, right?"

"Right." Martha agreed cheerily, as if it was the easiest task in the world.

"Do I look like the kinda geek who would know that stuff?" Jack grumbled, already working the material in his hands until he was able to pull away a small chunk.

"Actually, yeah." Martha's smile grew. "Trust me, you're way smarter than you act sometimes."

Jack stuck a detonator stick into the malleable lump in his right hand and huffed. "Yeah, well tell me how the heck I got entangled with you and Doctor _Do Good_ then?"

Before Martha could answer, he tossed the lump of explosive out into the yard with his best pitch and then hit the ground, covering his ears with his hands to muffle the sound of the blast.

Martha mimicked the move, feeling small segments of concrete and stone raining down on her back as the impromptu grenade exploded.

Before the dust and flying debris had settled, Jack was back up, gun in hand. Taking a risk, he moved out into the open, keeping his weapon trained on the generator doorway.

All he could see from this angle and distance was the thick black veil of the unknown. Anyone, or anything, could still be hiding in the shadows, waiting to empty their clip into him.

_And you're not immortal yet…_

"Okay, out in the open, _now_," he demanded. "Weapons on the floor, hands behind your heads…"

There was a beat. A pause that seemed to last far longer than the three short seconds it took for the young soldier to toss out his M16 and emerge into the daylight.

"I said hands behind your head!" Jack stretched his fingers over the automatic. His palm was sticky with sweat and he realized he was actually scared for the first time in his life.

How much longer had they got to stop the generator? And could the Doctor finish his part of the deal even if they did kill the extra power to the Rift?

"I was just following orders…" The MP slid his hands to the back of his skull and looked Jack over, unsure if he'd made the right choice. "Everyone started acting weird…not sane anymore. I didn't know who to trust, who to follow…"

"So you stuck with _Commandant_ Tesla's instructions?" Jack frowned as he stepped closer to his prisoner. Catching the kid alive was one thing, but he was now realizing he had nothing to secure the soldier with.

_And I don't have time to play nursemaid while the planet burns_…

As he scolded himself mentally, Martha dodged around them, plucking a set of cuffs from the back of the MP's belt. She dangled them under Jack's nose with a condescending smile that made the Time Agent narrow his eyes.

His comeback was less than subtle, as usual. "Oh, _yes please_…who'd have thought you like to play _that_ way Miss Jones…?"

Martha didn't give him the satisfaction of a reply, quickly slapping the cuffs on the soldier before he decided to make a run from his slightly deranged captors.

"Wha…what do you want? I mean, why are you doing this? What did you do to the others?" The soldier allowed himself to be prodded back towards the generator, but his wild eyes suggested he thought they were still the enemy, not Tesla.

"_We_ didn't do anything. We're trying to put this mess right." Martha walked alongside the young man, with Jack taking point until they were inside the two-roomed building. From inside the second chamber, they could hear the generator humming relentlessly.

"If you're innocent, why the guns? The explosives?"

"Because it's quicker than trying to reason with people like you?" Jack raised a brow. "You fired first, remember? How did that make us the bad guys?" He put a foot forward, hand outstretched to nudge the generator house door open.

As Jack's fingers curled around the handle, the MP's throat bobbed. "Wait…" he grimaced as the word came out, obviously uncertain of what he was about to say. "Don't go in there…"

Jack instantly tensed, letting the .45 in his hand train on the door. "One of your buddies inside?" He whispered, never taking his gaze from the entrance.

The MP nodded. "Sarge got a little…_strange_ an hour or so ago. Like the others, all weird. And his eyes, God, his _eyes_…He said if anyone tried to go in, he'd take their head off…"

"Great, just great," Jack tried to keep his voice down, but it was hard when it felt like they were hitting wall after wall. He glanced fleetingly at Martha, knowing she'd be reading his mind right about now. _Use the C4 and blow the whole dang building…_

"Maybe if I go in first…" It was the young MP and he was shaking as he made the offer.

Jack shook his head. "No thanks, we tried it that way once already today, and let's just say I didn't like the outcome." If he couldn't trust Amy, no way was he trusting this kid. He looked back to Martha. "Look, I hate to quote _Star Trek_, but you gotta see the good of the many outweighs the one here?"

"We can't just blow someone up because he's sick!"

"Fine." Jack shrugged. "Then I guess I'll get killed trying to save zombie guy. Kinda cuts out all the worry of being immortal later, huh?" He rolled his eyes and then lashed out at the door with the heel of his boot.

The metal partition buckled, but didn't yield, so Jack stepped back and then threw his weight at it, crashing into the door with his right shoulder until it imploded inwards, hinges tearing from their frame.

Jack rolled, using the momentum to throw himself on the floor. The move proved a wise one as a hail of bullets filled the space where he'd been standing seconds earlier.

Kill, or be killed, that was the question now.

He rotated his body, pushing up from the damp concrete to take aim at the crazed sergeant. The man was just like all the others, wide-eyed, lost in a world inside his head.

Jack tensed, wanting to pull the trigger of his weapon, but suddenly finding a goofy Brit accent filling his head instead. _No shooting the natives!_

The Time Agent hesitated, realizing that his quarry hadn't let off any more rounds.

He blinked, thinking when he re-opened his eyes the scene before him would have changed. But it hadn't. 'Sarge' was helplessly fumbling with his rifle, trying to pry an empty clip from its body with little success.

Either his condition had made him clumsy, or somehow the M16 had jammed. Either way, Jack couldn't believe his luck. But then, was it his luck, or the luck of the Time Lords? It was the Doctor who didn't want any killing, and he usually seemed to get his way, even when he wasn't actually in the room.

Jack shook his head and stuffed his .45 back in his waistband. "I'm so going to regret this…" Stepping lithely forwards, he swung a right hook at the distracted soldier's chin, thinking he could knock him down if he couldn't shoot him.

The punch landed squarely on the sergeant's jaw and he stumbled backwards with an angry grunt. Whether he was angry at Jack or at himself for his own misgivings, the Time Agent couldn't determine.

What Jack did realize almost immediately, though, was that 'Sarge' wasn't going to go down. He shook his hand and grimaced. The blow might not have taken out his opponent, but his knuckles were definitely going to bruise.

Jack dodged sideways, trying to keep his feet moving and his hands up like a professional pugilist.

The MP rubbed absently at his reddening chin and then unexpectedly swung a punch of his own. The man's fist narrowly missed Jack's right eye and continued on through the air until it impacted on the wall behind them.

Paint and plaster crumbled from the force of the blow, but 'Sarge' didn't even notice. He pulled his arm back, lunging again like a fractious baboon. This time, the punch actually hit home, knocking Jack backwards until he felt his body losing its balance.

He grabbed at the nearby wall, caught himself and then barrelled head first at the enemy. If ordinary fighting didn't work, then he was prepared to wrestle the man to the floor.

'Sarge' actually chuckled insanely at the Time Agent's move, bringing his arms down so heavily on Jack's back that he thought his spine would snap. Instead, Jack simply buckled, finding himself on the concrete with the MP hovering above him.

And still the man just stared with those wild, swirling eyes.

Jack's hand drifted to the gun tucked into his trousers. If he had to do it…

"So, you gonna kill me, or smile me to death?" he asked sarcastically.

The sergeant didn't get the joke, but decided that if he couldn't fire his weapon he'd use it to bludgeon his foe into the floor. He grabbed at the rifle he'd dropped previously, turning it so he could use the butt like a club.

Raising it above his head, his crazed eyes glistened with Rift madness and he didn't even notice Jack pull out his own weapon.

"Sorry, but I got a date with immortality I don't want to miss…" Jack's trigger finger hovered, but didn't pull back. There was no need, because the MP was already slumping forwards, pupils rolling back under his eyelids.

'Sarge' landed on top of Jack with a sound that resembled a snore and remained perfectly still.

"Hey, I'm not _that_ easy," Jack snarked, heaving the dead-weight of the man off him with a scowl of distaste. "Especially not when you tried to ruin my striking good looks..." He massaged his jaw for effect, wincing as the move proved painful.

After a second, it actually occurred to him that he hadn't disarmed the man, and he looked up.

Martha was standing between him and the unconscious soldier with a grin on her face and an empty hypo in her hand. "See, not everything is solved with weapons!"

Jack grunted and pushed up from the floor. "Tell that to my jaw tomorrow." He looked at the sleeping MP. "Wondered where you'd gotten to," he mused, searching his pockets for the somewhat squished blocks of C4.

"Infirmary is close by. Couldn't find anything to hit him with here so…"

Jack nodded, impressed. "You use your initiative a lot, Martha Jones. You sure I can't interest you in that job?" He walked over to the generator, pushing the plastic explosive onto the metal and moulding it with his hands.

"Let's see if we live first, yeah?" Martha watched him work, taking tentative glances over her shoulder to make sure they didn't get any more unwanted guests. When Jack was almost finished, she jogged over to the drugged MP and grabbed his arms. "I'll drag him out into the yard where it's safe."

Jack bobbed his head, and as she vanished from the room muttered. "_You _hope_ it'll be safe…_" He jabbed in two detonators and then scrambled to his feet, dashing for the door in the sure knowledge that he had no clue how long they had to get to safety.

_For a Time Agent, I never was very good __with timers,_ he reflected as the building behind him shuddered and an almighty roll of man-made thunder filled the air.

And then, the blast and secondary shockwave hit, and he pondered no more.

_

* * *

_

The Doctor felt the sheer intensity of the Rift pressing down at his shoulders like he was experiencing extreme G-force. If this was what it was like for a Time Lord _with _a special suit, what would happen to a mere human in this room? He dared not even think about the mental image such a thought could conjure.

Instead, he turned in the bulky suit, scouring the room for signs of Tesla through the murky visor.

It didn't take long to find the rogue Gallifreyan – Tesla was in the corner by the Rift, meddling with the machine the Doctor had inspected earlier.

Tesla hadn't seen him enter, and was frenziedly zapping the conglomeration of parts with what looked suspiciously like a sonic screwdriver of his own.

When his attempts to gain accurate telemetry failed, he angrily slammed a gloved hand into the contraption and it juddered from the blow.

"Having a bit of a power cut?" The Doctor stepped forwards, noting the movement was getting harder – like he was trying to defy gravity in some way. "Should have paid that last bill on time…don't you know you should never wait until the red one arrives…?" He made a tutting sound, but it was lost inside the helmet.

Tesla whirled around, rocking slightly as he too fought the energy from the Rift. "Resourceful, and as predictable as ever," he pulled a disgruntled face that said he had better things to do than small talk.

"Predictable? _Me_?" The Doctor looked taken aback, as if he'd just been insulted, but he carried on regardless. "I wouldn't bother tinkering with that old piece of junk…even the vortex manipulator won't help you without co-ordinates…and I um…may have inadvertently…well, no…_intentionally_, actually...just disconnected your guidance system." He pulled a pensive face and then tapped the front of his helmet as if he was in deep thought. "Thought I'd send it somewhere it would be more appreciated!"

"The TARDIS…_My_ _TARDIS_!" Tesla's voice deepened into a cavernous growl and he moved away from the device to stand directly in front of the Doctor. "You shouldn't have done that…"

The Doctor grinned, unabashed. "'Course I should! Stolen property should always be returned to the rightful owner. Don't know much about the law, do you?" He fleetingly glanced at the core of the Rift. It was getting harder to resist looking at its mesmerising kaleidoscope of colours and tantalizing unrefined energy. He had to hurry.

Martha had to hurry.

"You can't go anywhere now. _Well_, not unless you want to get tossed about infinity and beyond. Might be fun for a while, until the eternal darkness and unending um…nothingness starts to drive you mad." He shot Tesla a wary glance and then muttered. "'Course, in your case you're already halfway there…"

"Bring the TARDIS back and join me. Go home to Gallifrey…see the second sun rise in the south as if you'd never lost it…_rule _with me…!"

The Doctor's head cocked to one side, and it looked for a moment as if he was considering it. His eyes seemed to glaze over at the memory of his home world. The cities, the glorious red sky, the trees with leaves of shimmering silver.

And then he sighed, turning his attention back to Tesla. "_Riiight_…see, now why is it that everyone wants to make a deal when they're backed into a corner? Once knew a Headmaster…well no, actually he was a _Krilitane,_ but who cares? Anyway…he offered me pretty much the same arrangement…funny old world, isn't it?"

Tesla scrutinized the Doctor as if he'd gone mad. "If you don't help me, then you and the rest of this world, maybe more, will die _with_ me. You can't shut down the Rift and it will tear a hole in the fabric of time and space itself until the Big Bang theory seems like a mere party trick…"

The Doctor grimaced as if Tesla had sworn. "_Oooh_, what is it with everyone and Big Bang today? First Jack, now you…it's getting very old. 'Least he was funny…" He grinned. "_Anyway_, back to the swirly whirly thing here…" He pointed to the whirlpool that threatened to engulf them. "Any moment now you're about to lose more juice when my mates shut down your secondary generator…shoulda paid that bill, eh?"

Tesla stole a look at the device keeping the Rift wide open. His eyebrows twitched and he clenched both fists in frustration.

There was nowhere to go, no answers.

"There's no need for anyone else to die here," the Doctor cajoled, his face softening just a touch.

Tesla's features remained the colour and texture of stone as he twisted back to face his nemesis. "Oh, but I think there is…_YOU_!"

Even in the heavy-duty suit, Tesla moved both swiftly and accurately, diving at his prey like he was in some chaotic rugby scrum.

The Doctor was slower to react – he'd had far less practice in the unwieldy suit and it was showing. Almost too late, he realized that Tesla was not only attacking, but that he had his gloved hand outstretched, the tip of his sonic glowing wildly.

The screwdriver pulsed and the Doctor felt something give in his suit. Whatever control activated its protective properties, Tesla had just switched them off.

His body was exposed to the full effects of the Rift – the crude, fatal energy pulsing through his veins as surely as was his blood.

As the realization hit, so did Tesla's attack. Barrelling into the Doctor, both men crumpled to the floor in an ugly heap of tangled limbs and weighty helmets.

The Doctor rolled over first, kicking at Tesla just enough to make him shrink back from the Time Lord's boot heel. With only seconds to work with, the Doctor unclamped his helmet and tossed it to one side, grateful for the extra mobility and vision.

_Vision…_

Should he really be seeing two Teslas?

He shook his head, knowing the Rift was getting to him, getting inside him, inside his head, inside every molecule until he exploded in a mangled heap of tissue.

He didn't want to, but he had no choice – to save mankind, he would have to fight – no, he would have to _win_.

Pushing onto his elbows, he tried to stumble to his feet, but his muscles were already refusing. _Martha, Donna, Mickey, Rose, Jack…_ All of them would cease to exist if he didn't _move._

He lurched forwards, grabbing Tesla by the shoulders. After the destruction of Gallifrey he'd hoped never to raise a fist in anger again, but if taking a swing at this turncoat meant saving countless billions, then he'd do it. _No second chances_…

The flashing imagery of a long ago sword fight with a Sycorax whirled through his head_. I'm that sort of a man…_

Tesla didn't wait for the first right hook to land. Jarring backwards, away from the Doctor's grip, he rolled dangerously close to the mouth of the Rift, and all too late realized his mistake.

The out of control singularity was sucking in matter, smashing it through time and space at a miraculous rate. The closer you got to its maw, the more chance there was of being swallowed by its insatiable jaws.

He stumbled backwards, his limbs being dragged across the floor against his will. Arms outstretched he tried to grab for the walls, for anything that would stop his body being smothered by the sheer power of time.

"_No!!!!"_ Tesla's scream was more than primal, it was almost childlike as he realized he had sealed his own terrible fate.

The Doctor was being dragged now too as the energy began to pulse through the entire room. He fell forwards, unable to fight its power. Reaching out a hand, he tried desperately to at least grab hold of Tesla.

If they were to be tossed out into the void between worlds, then perhaps it was at least fitting that the last two Time Lords were imprisoned in the darkness together – for what short time there would be any kind of universe, at any rate.

Tesla smiled, but didn't take the offered hand.

Instead, he stopped fighting the monster he had created, letting the Rift consume him. In a flash of light and chroniton energy, he was gone, sucked into some other world, time, maybe even dimension.

As the glare from his departure faded, the Doctor realized the Rift's mouth was shrinking, collapsing in on itself like space was folding, closing up some hideous wound.

He rolled onto his back, lopsided grin returning, eyelids closing in exhaustion. "Martha…"

"Yes, bloody_ meddlesome_ Martha…"

The Doctor forced his eyes back open to find Amy peering down at him, her face a mask of anger, frustration and so much more. She held a small automatic in her right hand, and continuously flicked back her hair with the other as if the motion would somehow calm her – a woman on the brink of insanity.

She was wearing a suit, but no helmet. Still, now that the Rift was closing, the residual effects might not be enough to harm her.

"Hello again…" He tried to sound chipper, but it really wasn't working. He couldn't sit up, let alone stand, so there was no way he could fight her. In fact, the way his mind was begging to shut down like some late night TV channel, he wasn't even sure he could outwit her.

"You killed him…left me trapped in this godforsaken time like some…_some_…" The gun wavered in her hand, fingers flexing over its butt as she considered her options. "Some forgotten castaway…" She kneeled, pressing the tip of the automatic's barrel to his temple. "Tell me, if I pull the trigger at this close range, would you even have time to _consider_ regenerating?"

The Doctor closed his eyes, dragging down a ragged breath. "Oh, I don't think you have to worry about that," he conceded.

Amy seemed to consider the muted response and lack of mirth, and then her expression of anger turned to pleasure. "Feeling the effects of the Rift, are we?" She glanced warily across to where the mouth of the opening had been.

"Either that, of I have a hellish hangover…which considering I rarely drink...Oooh _wait!_ Unless someone slipped me an almighty big Mickey in my last cup of tea! Thought it was a bit iffy for Earl Grey…"

The girl's gun hand began to tremble and she flicked off the weapon's safety. "Then let me put an end to the pain…" Her forefinger closed on the trigger.

"Let me take that for you…"

Amy flinched just long enough for Martha to spin her around and knock the gun cleanly from her hand. Before the nurse could react further, Martha swung her best punch, knocking Tesla's sidekick out cold.

Hardly satisfied with the short fight, she huffed and looked to Jack who stood by watching with amusement.

"Aww, and I _so_ love a good cat fight," he kidded.

"Don't…encourage her…" The Doctor peered up at the pair, but still didn't move. He looked tired, drained, sick even.

Martha fell to her knees at his side and Jack joined her on the other.

"Told you we wouldn't leave you," she said, cradling the Time Lord's head in her lap. "You'll be alright now…we've got you…"

The Doctor sucked down a long breath and began to hack violently.

It sounded wet and guttural.

Martha held him tighter, her eyes welling. She looked to Jack for support, but he didn't know what might come next. That was something only the older Jack was privy to.

"You can regenerate, yeah?" She brushed the hair gently back from his forehead and he swallowed hard, wishing he had the right answer.

If only it were that simple.

The deep brown eyes that were usually so full of jollity and life seemed to dull and he felt his limbs begin to sag in Martha's firm grip. "I'm sorry…I'm so _so sorry_…"

_To be Continued..._


	7. Chapter 7

_Chapter Seven_

Martha felt something give in the pit of her stomach as the Doctor's eyes rolled back under their lids. It couldn't be over, not like this.

Despite her training telling her otherwise, she shook him, realizing for the first time how weightless his skinny little body seemed to be.

So vulnerable…

_So… _

Martha shook him again. "_Doctor!"_

She sensed Jack kneel down beside her and slip an arm around her comfortingly. His expression said he didn't know whether to hug her or try and help her somehow. They both seemed so powerless.

It wasn't fair, it _just wasn't._

How could the Universe do this after all the Doctor had done for it over the past nine hundred years?

"There must be _something_ we can do…" Jack looked from the prone Time Lord to Martha and there was genuine understanding instead of his usual quirky flippancy.

_Martha_ didn't have the answer.

"_Well_…since you put it like that….a bag of fish and chips would be _brilliant!_ Plenty of salt! Salt stimulates the old enzymes, you know…" The Doctor opened his left eye and peered at Martha, his face spreading into a grin. "Don't you know it's rude to shake people, Martha Jones? Especially _sick _people!"

Martha opened her mouth and then quickly snapped it shut again, trying to gather herself after the initial surprise of his miraculous recovery. "_Oi!_ Don't you _ever_…" She whacked him lightly, still unsure what effect the Rift had had on him, even if he was well enough to joke. "You're not regenerating, so what _were_ you sorry for?"

"Oh _that_!" He finally opened his right eye and sniffed. "Well, we never did get you to Gettysburg!" He winked and then sighed, letting his head fall back on Martha's lap.

Before she could question him further, he'd snuggled into a ball, using her as his pillow.

Within seconds, Martha Jones and Jack Harkness were privy to just how loud a Time Lord could snore should they ever actually sleep.

Martha decided it was a good thing that it didn't happen all that often.

* * * *

The project room was silent now, the sound from the pulsing Rift no longer echoing from its walls.

Martha had heard stories about how quiet the Nazi concentration camps had been when Allied soldiers had liberated them during WW2. _Unnaturally_ quiet.

_This_ quiet.

Was this the Universe's response to mass, pointless deaths?

She looked over, watching as the Doctor picked over the room's contents as if he were at some scientific car boot sale. He seemed subdued, vacant almost.

_He's feeling the weight of all the deaths here on his shoulders, just like he always does. _

The Time Lord appeared to sense her thoughts and glanced up from prodding a dead console to smile at her. Even the width of that toothy grin was short – definitely forced.

He was blaming himself for all the people who had been turned by the Rift's energy – people who since its sudden closure had vanished, apparently into thin air.

The Doctor had surmised that the 'zombies' had, in fact, been sucked into an alternate reality, perhaps even the void itself. Or maybe they were still here, trapped in some alternate plane of existence.

Martha felt a cold chill pass over her at the idea, and she wrapped her arms around her upper body, hugging herself. Suddenly, even the icy drifts she'd encountered in the past were warmer than Montauk.

"What will happen here now?" She joined the Doctor. "I mean, we can't…"

"We can't stay," he finished for her, wafting back his overcoat and stuffing his hands in his trouser pockets. "I just need to make sure none of Tesla's technology is left for the wrong hands to get their um…hands on…and then it's off home to Merry Old…"

"And him?" She bobbed her head towards Jack Harkness.

The Time Agent was oblivious to their conversation, instead focusing on prying at Tesla's contraption with a pair of pliers. He seemed hell bent on retrieving his somewhat erratic vortex manipulator, and nothing was going to stop him.

When the pliers proved useless, he tossed them over his shoulder and picked up a small hammer. Clattering noises ensued, along with several curse words from the Captain.

The Doctor beamed roguishly. "Never changes does he? Bit of an odd bod that one…and that's why…that's why I have to make sure he stays that way."

Martha's forehead furrowed and her eyebrows shot up in puzzlement. "You have to what?"

"I have to make him forget, Martha. Jack has to forget _everything_ that happened here – not just us – but everything since his arrival. He can't know he's never going to die…not in the normal sense…" The Doctor took down a long breath. This was his serious mode and it meant he was hating every minute of what he was being forced to do. "If Jack remembers us, remembers that he's immortal, the timeline will be altered forever…"

Martha's gaze automatically shifted to the still-struggling Time Agent. He was now sitting on the floor kicking at the machine with his heavy boot heels. The macho show of force wasn't getting him anywhere.

"He once told me the Time Agency wiped his mind of two years of his life, but he never knew why. But it wasn't the Agency, it was us then?"

The Doctor nodded sombrely. "I don't have any choice…" From the corner of his eye, he saw movement and clamped his jaw squarely shut.

The young soldier that had fought Martha and Jack at the generator room scurried towards them, but now, he was working with them instead of against them.

Approaching the Doctor, he snapped off a perfect salute and then stood stiffly to attention. "U.N.I.T. have confirmed your identity, sir. They're dispatching a clean up detail immediately to help contain the situation."

The Doctor rubbed his hands together. "Molto Bene! The cavalry are on their way! Faster than a speeding light bulb! No, wait, that's not quite _right_…" He shook his head, forgetting the stray thought. "Just one thing, though…" He looked dubiously at the soldier. "No more salutes, please. Makes me feel more important than I am. Not that I'm _not_ important, just not _that_ important. _Although_…"

The airman squirmed, unsure how to react to the Doctor's over-zealous babbling and Martha almost felt the need to rescue him. She glanced at his nametag. It was always better – less formal – if you had a real name to put to a face.

The name, coupled with the man's Bronx accent, made her almost choke and she had to stop herself from staring at him to the point of being rude. Sanchez. But not the Sanchez she had served under in U.N.I.T. surely?

She blinked, taking in his features again, and the more she scrutinized, the more she realized this really was, or would be, Lieutenant General Sanchez of the 82nd Airborne Division – the man who would one day give his life to the Daleks so that she might escape with the Osterhagen Key .

How or why he seemed to have transferred military organizations was a mystery, but in the future, he would be a hero.

Sanchez obviously couldn't miss her strange stare, and he frowned as if he had committed some sin. When he suddenly began to apologize, Martha realized his expression wasn't focused on her after all.

"Sir," he addressed the Doctor again. "I'm also very sorry to report that Miss Rattigan has escaped our custody. We don't know how she got out of the cell but…"

The Doctor pulled a face that definitely gave the impression he had trapped wind. "_Who??_" He questioned rubbing his brow as if the answer would just pop into his head.

"He means Amy, the nurse," Martha offered helpfully. "We have to find her, yeah? It's not like we can let her go running around in the past like she owns the place, right?"

The Doctor shook his head wearily. "That's exactly what we're going to do, Martha Jones! Now that Tesla has gone, little Amy-wamy has no power here, no influence, no techno toys to help her get the upper hand. Besides –" he cocked his head and smiled. "U.N.I.T. are on their way with a big old mop and bucket to clean up what went on here. Plausible deniability and all that…"

Sanchez looked from Martha to the Doctor and almost saluted before turning tail and marching back into the nearest corridor. He obviously thought they were both barking mad and wanted no further part in what was occurring at Montauk.

Martha watched him go, knowing, remembering his last words to her as she'd donned project indigo.

"_You know what to do, for the sake of the human race. Dr Jones, good luck…"_

If only she could warn him of his fate.

"Oi, you fancy him then?" The Doctor smirked. "Haven't taken your eyes off him in minutes!"

"I know him…_will_ know him." Martha explained, careful to omit the fact that Sanchez would be another casualty of the Daleks. "Anyway," she swiftly changed the subject. "What's with you not going after Amy? We never usually leave loose ends like that."

The Doctor's eyes narrowed and he brushed back his long overcoat again, taking long strides towards Jack Harkness, who still had his back to them. "No time," he offered. "I've no time at all…"

Martha hastened after him. "But you're a _Time_ Lord!"

The Doctor didn't answer, instead tapping Jack on the shoulder, causing the young man to spin around instinctively. For a second, Jack's pupils widened as he saw the Doctor's hands heading swiftly to either side his head.

"Hey, I thought you said you didn't swing that wa…"

As the Doctor's fingertips touched his skin, he relaxed, dropping into an almost instant trance.

The Doctor concentrated, letting his mind touch Jack's, wiping away any memories, any last vestiges of their presence in his subconscious. There could be no trace of the last two years, no trace of anything or all would be lost.

When he'd finished, Jack slumped forwards into the Time Lord's waiting arms, seemingly fast asleep.

"Now what do we do with him?" Martha asked, wondering if this is how it had been with Donna.

The Doctor looked up, still taking the weight of the Time Agent, even though the effort seemed to drain him. "We take him home to the 51st century," he stated simply. "We take him _home_, Martha."

In that instant, Martha saw a deep longing in the Gallifreyan she'd never seen before. Sure, he'd talked about Gallifrey, mourned it in some ways even, but this look, this yearning was something more.

Instinct, perhaps, to return to his birthplace before…before _what?_

Slipping an arm around Jack to help the Doctor carry him to the TARDIS, Martha was beginning to suspect she had some of the answers.

And she didn't like the equation they were adding up to.

* * * *

The blue police box coughed and wheezed like an old man who'd been off his nebulizer too long, and yet still it always seemed to materialise in one piece.

This time, the ancient time machine blurred into existence in Martha Jones'

home and became eerily silent.

For once, Martha was first out the familiar wooden door, almost walking into her sofa with a huff. "Your parallel parking gets worse!" she grumbled, only just getting her balance in time to avoid falling flat on her face.

"Well…I never really was one for taking lessons. Pull a few levers, press a few buttons…see what happens next! That's my philosophy. 'Course," he scratched absently at his chin, "I've had a few near misses in my time…and then there was last Christmas when I accidentally ran into the Titanic…although, strictly speaking it wasn't _really_ the Titanic…"

"You fancy that cup of tea now?"

Martha was already heading for the kitchen when the Doctor's face became sombre again and he shook his head.

"Sorry, not really got time for tea. Need to be going…"

Martha stopped in her tracks and turned, arms folded. How could he drag her to an ice planet full of bodies, then into the seventies to be chased by zombies and rogue Time Lords, and _then_ expect to dump her again as per usual?

She was about to tell him as much when she paused, realizing just how different he looked. How hadn't she noticed it before?

Those eyes, usually so full of mirth and the spark of life, now dull and clouded, tiny bags hanging beneath them making him look old.

All nine hundred years old.

He'd always been skinny, but now, he looked fragile – as if she could snap an arm with just the pressure of her thumb and forefinger.

"_No time," he offered. "I've no time at all…" _

With horror, Martha re-evaluated those words and came to a terrifying conclusion. A conclusion she refused to accept even though the cold hard truth stood before her, struggling to stand upright.

"You didn't regenerate back in the project room because you _couldn't_, could you?" The sentence came out clipped and harsh sounding, even though she'd never intended it that way.

"Too much damage on a cellular level," he admitted with a sigh. "Maybe it'll work tomorrow…or the next day." He wasn't pulling punches now, and that scared Martha even more.

"And if you _still _can't?" She didn't really need him to tell her the answer. She just hoped he had another option – because the Doctor always had options. He could do anything with a sonic screwdriver and a piece of string.

The Doctor put a hand on her forearm, and when he spoke it was as if he'd already accepted his fate. "I'm a Time Lord, Martha. I see everything. What is, what was, what could be, and what must not be. Maybe…maybe if I _can't _regenerate then it's the Universe's way of saying it's finally my time…"

Martha sucked down a breath, stifling back the wealth of water pooling in her eyes. This wasn't fair, and it wasn't right, but of all the things he wouldn't want her to do, it was cry.

"Stay here. You shouldn't be alone…"

For some reason he visibly brightened. Maybe it was just for her sake.

"Me? Alone? What, with all those aliens out there just _begging_ for my autograph…? Well, mostly its autographs, _although_, I get the impression there's a few Carrionites who wouldn't be pleased to see me…" He took a breath then looked over his glasses at Martha. "I can't stay here. If I don't regenerate, I have to make sure the TARDIS is somewhere it will be safe forever…"

Martha couldn't stop the tears, not any longer. She reached forward and let her arms fall around him, hugging the skinny Time Lord until she thought he would break.

She expected him to pull away or yell 'Geroff!'

But he didn't.

They simply stayed that way until Martha's faint little sobs had died into muted hitches.

Eventually, she dared to look up into those captivating, mysterious eyes of his, and for the briefest of moments she thought she saw a familiar glimmer there. "You can't die," she whispered, and then more forcefully. "You WON'T."

The Doctor grinned. "'Course not!" he exclaimed with a wink. "Just making a few contingency plans, that's all! Gallifreyan last will and testament or something…I, Sir Doctor of TARDIS, being of sound mind…um, well, _mostly_ sound mind, do bequeath all my um…o_ther_ worldly goods to…"

She punched him then. Just a small punch, but enough to stop the blathering before it went too far.

"I won't see you again, will I? I mean, not…"

"No," he admitted, letting his eyes drop to the carpet rather than face her still-reddened features. "If you see me again, it won't be me. At least, not _this _version of me. Pity really, I was rather partial to the teeth." He ran his tongue along the bottom of his top incisors to make the point.

Even now, he had to have the last quip.

"_Anyway_…not to worry!" He took the bottom of Martha's chin, lifting her head so she could see his smile. "Even if_ I_ can't be here, I _will_ be here, one way or another…" He winked again cryptically and then trotted over to the TARDIS. At the police box door, he waved and grinned. "I mean, can't leave you humans on your own now, can I? Never know_ what_ you'll get up to next!"

In a second, he'd bobbed inside the time machine without so much as a goodbye.

Martha waited for the usual hiss and whirr that said the time rotor was warming up, but it never came. Instead, the Doctor suddenly darted back out of the TARDIS with a thickly bound book in his hand. He pressed it into her palm, then backed up.

"Never did get you to Gettysburg! Have a gander at that instead! Personal journal of Lincoln's bodyguard." He pointed with a finger as if he could magic the book open in her hand. "Photos and everything! Just um…be careful where you leave it…it's not actually been discovered yet…" He moved to dart back in the TARDIS. "Oh and look after that Tom of yours…he's a good man." He winked. "For a _Doctor…_"

"Wait!"

Martha wanted to say goodbye. She wanted to give the lonely Time Lord some words of comfort – some assurance that this wasn't the end.

But she couldn't.

The Doctor had never really been any good at farewells, and suddenly Martha realized why.

She fingered the journal, watching as the police box door closed and it finally began to pant and groan. The light on the top started to flash wanly, and abruptly its solid edges began to turn opaque.

Across the room, Martha's new DAB radio suddenly turned itself on. She told herself it was some kind of interference from the alien machine in her living room, but then the digital tuner began to flash too.

Nothing like this had ever happened before, and the police box_ had_ inhabited her home on more than one occasion.

As the TARDIS grew more indistinct, the radio finally settled and Martha could hear the haunting lyrics of Snow Patrol's 'Run.' It was funny, but she still preferred this version to Leona's cover.

_You've been the only thing that's right  
In all I've done…_

And I can barely look at you  
But every single time I do  
I know we'll make it anywhere  
Away from here

Light up, light up  
As if you have a choice  
Even if you cannot hear my voice  
I'll be right beside you dear

Martha rubbed at her still-bleary eyes, sensing fresh moisture there.

_To think I might not see those eyes  
Makes it so hard not to cry  
And as we say our long goodbye…_

And then the TARDIS was gone. A ghostly apparition that had been exorcised from her presence forever by its master. As the last vestiges of its outline had vanished, so had the radio's power supply.

The music ceased to fill her ears and Martha succumbed to the hurt, to the heartache, slumping back onto the sofa. Was this the end of everything? And what had he meant by 'Even if_ I_ can't be here, I _will _be here, one way or another...'?

A stray tear dribbled down her cheek and landed on the book still in her grip. It was all she had of him now, she should at least look at his last gift to her.

Tentatively touching the letters etched into the hide, she read out the inscription. "Ward Hill Lamon 1863." The name meant nothing to her, but it was obviously someone of importance during the American Civil War.

She opened the cover, careful not to soil the aging pages further with her tears. Inside, the entries were faded, the purist handwriting almost intelligible in places.

Martha thumbed through to the middle were she found several tin type photos wedged into the spine. She pulled them out, instantly recognizing President Lincoln in several.

The larger of the pictures was obviously from the Gettysburg Address.

And she was seeing it all through the eyes and words of a man who had not only been there, but had been at the President's side.

Martha squinted at the blurred picture in her hand, unsure if her weary eyes were playing tricks.

But they weren't.

As impossible as it seemed, she recognized someone else in the picture, seated to the right of Lincoln as he signed the historic document.

It couldn't be…and yet….

Martha's hands began to shake and she almost dropped the photograph.

Somehow, Nikolai Tesla, or whatever his real name was, had found his way through the void back into the past. He hadn't been trapped. He hadn't suffered the same painful fate as the Doctor.

And with the Doctor gone, there was nothing she could do to stop whatever he chose to do there…

_Epilogue_

**Dårlig Ulv Stranden, Norway**

**Unknown Time**

**Parallel ****Reality…**

The empty TARDIS shimmered into existence, sinking into the soft sand as its dark blue exterior melded seamlessly with the raven cloak of the night.

Waves lapped at its base, water rippling over the wood and up to the doorframe, but the moisture never seeped inside – it, like unwanted intruders, was kept at bay by an unseen forcefield.

This was the time ship stolen by Tesla, and set free by the Doctor.

It was like a restless pet, seeking out an owner who had moved away to another town, another dimension and forgotten to take it along for the ride.

It was a machine, and yet it sensed, it felt, it _knew_ that part of _it_ was here.

_He_ was here.

Apart they were like two pieces of a puzzle, and together, together they were the perfect symbiosis of Time Lord and living vehicle.

In this world, without him, it was nothing.

The TARDIS needed power, strength from its own world, and that power was rapidly fading as the Rift began to shrink and destabilize. And yet, _he_ could save it, could make it whole again, even though he was not its real master.

Or was he?

It sensed, even this far away from him that he didn't share the DNA of Gallifrey. This one was human, and it had been sent out into the void to seek him out.

_Human…_

And yet…

And yet his consciousness was that of a Time Lord.

_Its_ Time Lord.

The TARDIS remained still as a high bank of clouds was gently blown southwards, allowing the moon to illuminate the bay and its angular wooden structure. High limestone walls surrounded it, hiding it from view, at least until morning.

The TARDIS didn't care. It could wait a thousand years if need be, perception filter set to maximum.

And one day, one day he would come for it, and the deceptive blue box with its earthly shape and unearthly magic would be ready.

The End

_(Author's Note: After David Tennant's announcement, I decided I wanted to carry on writing his version of the Doctor, I guess this is my way of seeding the way to do tha__t while allowing for a new Time Lord as well. That is, of course, if you, the readers really want to know what happens next…) _


End file.
